At last, Keytruda was finally approved to extend its reimbursement to first-line in lung cancer. However, whispers are rising on its approval, which was made four long years after the company applied for its reimbursement.

The keyword is ’trade-off.’ Trade-offs, which refer to the policy direction in which pharmaceutical companies who wish to register new drugs or expand reimbursement coverage opt to lower the price of their existing drugs to preserve the value of their new drugs, has been often brought up since 2019 in the process of discussing coverage expansion of new drugs.

In other words, the word is that MSD, Keytruda’s company, had opted to reduce the price of its existing dr