A Game-Theoretic Framework for Optimizing Pharmaceutical Pricing Negotiations Between Governments and Private Insurers
摘要
The pricing of pharmaceutical products represents a critical and often contentious challenge within modern healthcare systems, where governments and private insurers must balance the goals of financial sustainability, public health access, and market innovation. This paper presents a game-theoretic framework for modeling the strategic interactions among three principal stakeholders: pharmaceutical manufacturers, public healthcare agencies, and private insurance firms. The model incorporates utility functions reflecting each player’s objectives, including profit maximization, cost containment, and coverage optimization. A non-cooperative static game is formulated and analyzed under various policy scenarios involving drug pricing, government subsidies, and insurance reimbursement strategies. Simulation results reveal the existence of equilibrium zones where patient access is preserved, fiscal burdens are controlled, and stakeholder utilities are relatively optimized. Visual analytics, including three-dimensional surface plots and utility heatmaps, highlight the nonlinear trade-offs inherent in pharmaceutical pricing negotiations. This work ultimately aims to strengthen access and sustainability within modern healthcare systems, thereby supporting global commitments to public health. The findings underscore the potential of game-theoretic tools to inform evidence-based pricing policy in complex healthcare-financial ecosystems.