It's been a week since the Obama government released the Healthcare budget. The US $911 billion was aimed at providing optimum healthcare insurance to the maximum possible. This can be made possible if cost effective medicines i.e. off patent and bioequivalent generic medicines are made available to the masses.

Subsequent to the release of the US healthcare budget which has emerged as one of the Top 3 Twitter trends in the last week, a decision to provide the lowest costing medicines to the masses in Germany has come as a part of the Germany Drug pricing policy.

The policy aims at not allowing drug makers particularly branded drug makers to decide upon the pricing negotiations of drugs between them and the wholesalers in the region.

Spending on medicines by public insurers, which cover more than 70 million of the country's population, climbed 5.3 percent to 32 billion euros last year as companies increased their prices for patent-protected medicines by 8.9 percent.

The government will ensure that pharmaceutical companies will no longer be able to set the prices for medicine one-sidedly and on their own. Drug makers will also have to provide a dossier proving why their medicines are better for patients that will form the basis for price negotiations with health insurers. The payers may impose mandatory rebates of as much as 16 percent after the first 12 months, according to the plan.

The government aims to set a maximum price for medicines if drug makers and insurers fail to agree on an amount within a year, and the drugs would undergo a cost-benefit analysis by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, a semi-state body that includes doctors and known as IQWiG.

This is likely to change the face of German drug market because all those drug makers with a non-German origin will have to compulsorily bend to negotiating in a more aggressive manner with the payers.