Lower prices for 300 drugs, savings of around 65 million
Keystone-SDA
As part of its 2025 annual review, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) has reduced the prices of almost 300 medicines on the speciality list (ES) by an average of 12%, generating savings of at least CHF65 million as of December 1.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The criteria used are effectiveness, appropriateness and cost-effectiveness (EAE), the FOPH indicated in a note today. This is an important contribution to cost containment in the health sector.
+ The high stakes fight over drug prices
The drugs concerned mainly treat cardiovascular, respiratory and infectious diseases. For 50% of the original preparations no reduction was necessary, as they are already cost-effective compared to international comparisons. In contrast, for 70% of generics, co-marketing and biosimilars, cuts were triggered.
What is your opinion? Join the debate:
The three-year review (2023-2025), which examined the last third of medicinal reimbursement by mandatory health care insurance (AOMS), is expected to yield at least CHF335 million in savings overall. The last two rounds (2017-2019 and 2020-2022) generated total savings of CHF740 million, the note states.
Due to global supply shortages, the FOPH has granted waivers to price reductions for 55 critical medicines, mainly anti-infectives, to avoid market withdrawals. To strengthen security of supply, the Federal Council proposed in the second cost containment package a differentiated examination of the EAE criteria, excluding low-cost medicines from the affordability check. The legal basis was approved on March 21, 2025 and the amendment to the law will enter into force at the beginning of 2027.
More
More
How drug prices are negotiated in Switzerland and beyond
Translated from Italian by DeepL/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
