Impacts of Cost Containment Strategies on Pharmaceutical Expenditures of the National Health Insurance in Taiwan, 1996–2003

Introduction: Pharmaceutical expenditure (PE) of the National Health Insurance (NHI) programme in Taiwan grew from 62.2 billion Taiwan new dollars ($NT) in 1996 to $NT94.5 billion in 2003.The government has been introducing many strategies to control PE since the inception of NHI including price adjustment based on the prices of international products or existing products (inter-brands comparison), or market price and volume survey; delegation of financial responsibility to regional bureaux; co-payment for outpatient drugs; generic grouping (the reference pricing scheme based on chemical equivalence); a global budget payment system for clinics and hospitals; and reduction in the flat daily payment rate of the drugs for clinics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of these cost containment strategies on the PE of the NHI programme from 1996 to 2003.