Netherlands embracing generics to counter growing health care costs

With the elderly making up an ever greater share of the country’s population, the Netherlands is increasingly supporting its generics sector in an attempt to address mounting healthcare costs, says a new report from industry experts GlobalData.

This shows that the percentage of Dutch citizens aged 65 and over has climbed from 14.1% in 2006 to 15.6% last year, and is expected to further increase to 18.6% by the end of the decade – unavoidably increasing the demand on the nation’s healthcare resources.

In a bid to cut the country’s health care deficit, the Netherlands is focusing on the use of generics as a cost-containment tool. In 2008, health insurers introduced preference policies, which contain lists of medicines that have the same composition (or active substance), but differ in price. This resulted from health insurers’ preference to reimburse these less expensive medications. Consequently, the prices of commonly-used generic drugs fell by an average of 85% the following year.