I think you guys are talking about two different things. I don’t doubt that Sweden sets the reference price at " 10% above the price of the least expensive generic equivalent" for a “new drug” that’s not working any better than the generic drugs on the market. Most of Pharma drug “research” is devoted to reverse engineering their competitors most successful brand name drugs and devising something just different enough to earn patent protection. That’s how you get 7 different name brand blood pressure medications that basically do the same thing using the same chemical compounds.
For novel drugs that are clearly superior to what’s on the market like GLP-1, there’s no cap, but foreign governments can and do decide that the asking price for a drug is well above it’s value to the patient and decide not to cover it. Of course for something like GLP-1 which costs about $5 per dose to manufacture, even if you’re dropping the US price of $1,000/month down to $100/month in Sweden, you’re still making a lot of money.
intercst