This business school case study examines a real pricing dilemma: a life-prolonging cancer drug priced at $1,000/month was unaffordable for most patients in China, and the case asks students to work through what pricing strategy a health access consultancy should recommend to the drug's manufacturer. It's built around core access-to-medicine concepts like differentiated pricing and corporate social responsibility, using a real-world scenario to teach how affordability and market access decisions get made in practice.
Publication
Patient Access to Rencell in China (INSEAD Case Study)
Angelmar, Reinhard & Tekinturhan Ebru
INSEAD Business School case study
Published
Key Takeaways
This business school case study examines a real pricing dilemma: a life-prolonging cancer drug priced at $1,000/month was unaffordable for most patients in China, and the case asks students to work through what pricing strategy a health access consultancy should recommend to the drug's manufacturer. It's built around core access-to-medicine concepts like differentiated pricing and corporate social responsibility, using a real-world scenario to teach how affordability and market access decisions get made in practice.
- Centers on a single, concrete pricing decision: how to price a drug that works, but that almost no one in the target market can afford at its global price.
- Introduces students and readers to price discrimination and differentiated (tiered) pricing as tools for balancing company sustainability with patient access.
- Frames corporate social responsibility not as charity, but as a genuine business strategy question with real tradeoffs.
- Useful as a teaching example of exactly the kind of problem Axios and its partners solve in practice, making it a good illustration of the "why" behind access programs.
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