건강보험 약품비 증가의 주요 요인분석 = Major Growths of Korean Pharmaceutical Expenditure

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Objectives: Rising pharmaceutical expenditure in Korea has become a major concern of policy makers over recent years. To reduce the growth in pharmaceutical expenditure, we need to analyze the major determinants of pharmaceutical spending. We defined three drug types: new, abandoned and existing drugs. The existing drugs are composed of two aspects - the changes in price and quantity Methods: The data was extracted from the Korean National Health Insurance (NHI) claims data. The data was based on every prescription product dispensed to beneficiaries of the NHI between 2002 and 2006. Results: The contribution of the new drugs was 22~48% in the first half of 2002~2006. Abandoned products were associated with cost decrease. The contribution of the existing products impacted on most of the growth of the paired years in 2002~2006. The existing product spending broke down into price and quantity effects. Price Changes (PC) had the range of -1.7 to 0.5. Quantity Changes (QC) was more than 9% in 2002~2006. Recently, the number of prescription affected more than the mix of prescription on the QC. Conclusions: The results of this study provide evidence for making the political decision that the pharmaceutical regulations in Korea need to be focused on the volume control.