The Effect of the Drug Life Cycle Price on Cost-Effectiveness: Case Studies Using Real-World Pricing Data

•Drug prices are generally assumed to be constant in cost-effectiveness analyses. Nevertheless, it is known that prices change over the drug life cycle and generally decrease before and after loss of exclusivity, potentially due to increasing competition.•Incorporating the impact of decreasing drug prices over the model time horizon shows that incremental cost-effectiveness ratios may decrease by up to 113% in the selected examples in this study.•Factoring in retrospectively observed price developments of drugs to predict potential future trajectories may give a more representative estimate of the real-world cost-effectiveness of drugs, yet many national cost-effectiveness analysis guidelines remain unclear about the inclusion of loss of exclusivity and its exact form in future analyses.