Economic tools for ensuring access to medicines in Latin American countries

Summary: The greatest challenges for pharmaceutical policies in Latin American countries are related to the objective of promoting access for their populations. Around two thirds of the spending on medicine in the region is financed by household incomes, with a strong regressive effect on their financing. For these reasons, the economic regulation tools for controlling spending and prices of medicines take on singular importance. The present article examines a set of measures implemented by the countries in the region for the economic regulation of medicines centred on ensuring access to them, emphasizing those intended to control the prices of the pharmaceutical products and those oriented to moderating the spending on medicines in the health systems.