Tiered Pricing: The global solution to access to medicines?

Significant progress has been made in reducing child mortality over the last decade. However, levels of preventable child mortality are still unacceptable: more than 3 million children under five died in 2013 from illnesses that could have been treated with good-quality medicines and vaccines. Lack of access to medicines and vaccines, alongside other health services, remains a significant problem for more than third of the world’s population. Many different factors – including cost but also lack of government spending and lack of health workers – limit access to medicines and vaccines.

Ethical pricing policies by companies, such as voluntary tiered pricing, play a role in addressing high costs. This paper explores this concept of tiered pricing – the practice of charging different prices to different countries based on their wealth – and argues that, in order for it to be more effective in increasing access to essential medicines and vaccines, policies must be as transparent as possible, take into account inequity, particularly within a country, and be developed with inputs from affected stakeholders.