Striving to Meet the Needs of Patients in a New Policy Environment...

Sanofi created our pricing principles in 2017 because we felt an obligation to speak transparently and honestly about how we set the prices of our medicines. Our hope was that by leading by example, these actions would inspire others to join us in trying to make the system work better for patients. 

We’ve made good on that commitment by maintaining and publicly communicating a clear policy – we did not increase the list price of any medicine more than the projected rate of overall health care spending growth for any given product – for the past six years.

Our goal was not just responsibility in how we price, but also clarity. We have explained the system mechanisms that influence or drive and reward higher prices as well as the disconnect between our pricing decisions and patient costs. We’ve also outlined our policy clearly and reported on our adherence to limiting per-product price increases annually as a part of our Pricing Principles.

We hoped that disclosing our pricing actions in a transparent manner, in addition to our average aggregate U.S. list and net price changes, would help bring to light the flaws in the U.S. health care system that results in too many Americans struggling to pay for the therapies they need. 

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and other evolving market dynamics, we believe we need to adapt our pricing policy to reflect both the impact of the new law and other elements of the U.S. health care system.

Let me be clear - we are not abandoning our principles or our commitment to responsible pricing. We continue to acknowledge our role in preserving a sustainable health care system and in limiting our contribution to U.S. health care spending growth, but under the new law, which failed to fix many of the perverse incentives that drive a broken system, we will do so in a different way moving forward. 

Under our revised pricing policy, we will no longer anchor our pricing decisions to the National Health Expenditure benchmark. Instead, we will take a holistic view with three key factors, including ensuring patients have access to our medicines, new government policies, and evolving trends in the marketplace.  Although our upcoming Pricing Principles Report will assess our pricing actions in 2022 against our previous policy, in the spirit of transparency, the report will also highlight this change in our policy for 2023 and beyond. 

Our other guiding principles for pricing – providing a clear rationale for pricing of new medicines and disclosing our portfolio list and net changes annually – will remain unchanged as part of this policy update.  Sanofi’s steadfast commitment to patient access and affordability also remains unchanged and we will continue to advocate in support of policies that work in support of these core principles.