Economic tools for ensuring access to medicines in Latin American countries 1 Federico Tobar 2 and Evangelina Martich 3 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. Keywords: Public Policies, Latin America, Access, Medicines, Medicine Prices 1 Published as: TOBAR, F& MARTICH,E ;ϮϬϭϰͿ. EĐoŶoŵiĐ tools for security access to pharmaceuticals in Latin- AŵeƌiĐaŶ ĐouŶtƌies. PhaƌŵaĐeutiĐals PoliĐLJ aŶd Laǁ ϭ6 (2014) 207–224 2 United Nation Population Fund- Regional Reproductive Health Commodity Security Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean . ftobar@unfpa.org 3 Unasur. South American Institute of Government in Health.evamartich@isags-unasur.org Introduction The greatest challenges posed by medicines for public policies in Latin America are not related to their availability, and not eǀeŶ to theiƌ ƋualitLJ, ďut to the populatioŶ’s access to them. This means the possibility of satisfying a demand, which expresses a concrete need for care and can be solved adequatelLJ thƌough the supplLJ of pharmaceutical products available in a ĐouŶtƌLJ ;ϮϴͿ. IŶ LatiŶ AŵeƌiĐa populatioŶ’s access to medicines depends more on the functioning of the market than in other regions where the social security system and the State take a more active role in providing and financing drugs. Progress in access to medicines could be directly related to iŵpƌoǀeŵeŶts iŶ the populatioŶ’s ďuLJiŶg power (when people acquire medicines through the market) or to institutional schemes for health protection (when the medicine is provided by the health systems). In Latin America the greatest part of the financing of medicines (around two-thirds) comes from household incomes. This introduces a strong regressive effect, as the lower-income sectors dedicate more than 70% of their health expenses to acquiring medicines (5). This explains why the regulation of medicine prices can affect access to medicines in a greater proportion than in other regions. Within the functions roles states can assume in respect to medicines, the regulatory role includes three aspects: surveillance, technical regulation and economic regulation. This last aspect is only implemented when a government assumes that there is not sufficient harmony between the supply and the demand, in which case the optimal assignation of goods and resources requires norms and incentives to correct the miss functioning of this market.