The Startup Guide to Navigating Healthcare Reimbursement, Featuring Ron de Graaff (Repost)

When the US benchmarks drug prices against other countries, the whole world feels it. In this episode of MAP – the Market Access Podcast, Dr. Stefan Walzer sits down with Brittany La Couture of Applied Policy, a health policy attorney with eight years at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, to unpack the US “most favored nation” approach to drug pricing and the three CMMI models behind it: GENEROUS, GLOBE and GUARD. They discuss why providers and patients may carry the cost, why Brittany sees the models as a tax on manufacturers rather than a price cut, and whether launch delays in Europe point to a more fragmented global market. Stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform or listening directly on our website: MAP Podcasts — and if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to rate it and the podcast! MAP is the first and only bi-weekly market access podcast provided by MArS — and the global #1 podcast in the field of health economics. For more information about MArS Market Access and Pricing Strategy, visit: https://marketaccess4-0.com/ #MarketAccess #DrugPricing #MostFavoredNation #MFN #GLOBEModel #GUARDModel #CMMI #HealthPolicy #HealthEconomics #Pharma #PricingStrategy #MAPPodcast

In this episode of MAP – the Market Access Podcast, Dr. Stefan Walzer sits down with Rainer Westermann, Chairman of the Life Sciences Acceleration Alliance (LSAA), to ask whether Europe can remain a globally competitive home for life sciences innovation — and what has to change for new therapies to reach patients. Bringing an investor's lens, Rainer explains why so many promising European companies scale in the US instead: the "valley of death" between great science and a viable business, the shortage of productive growth capital, the absence of a deep, liquid capital market, and the drag of long timelines, fragmented member-state systems, and cost-containment-first thinking. They also unpack the ripple effects of the US Most Favored Nation policy, the patent cliff, and why patients — who are also voters — belong at the center of the debate. Stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform or listening directly on our website: MAP Podcasts —and if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to rate it and the podcast! MAP is the first and only bi-weekly market access podcast provided by MArS—and the global #1 podcast in the field of health economics. For more information about MArS Market Access and Pricing Strategy, visit: https://marketaccess4-0.com/ #MarketAccess #LifeSciences #Biotech #VentureCapital #PharmaInnovation #HealthcareInvestment #EuropeanUnion #MFN #MarketAccessStrategy #marketaccesspodcast

In this episode of MAP – the Market Access Podcast, Dr. Stefan Walzer sits down with Dr. Maurice Kléber to explore what building a winning team really takes — drawing on 18 years of leadership and a shared love of ice hockey. They discuss why trust and psychological safety are the foundation of any high-performing team, how role clarity and shared accountability turn a group of individuals into a unit, and why talent alone never wins — culture does. Along the way, Dr. Maurice shares the analogies he uses to make leadership tangible, from ships in a storm to aligned waves. A must-listen for leaders in pharma, market access, and beyond. Stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform or listening directly on our website: MAP Podcasts — and if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to rate it and the podcast! MAP is the first and only bi-weekly market access podcast provided by MArS — and the global #1 podcast in the field of health economics. For more information about MArS Market Access and Pricing Strategy, visit: https://marketaccess4-0.com/ #MarketAccess #Leadership #PharmaLeadership #HighPerformingTeams #WinningMindset #CellTherapy #Pharma #IceHockey #marketaccesspodcast

Everyone wants AI to click the button for them — the real question is whether you still need to click it at all. In this episode of MAP – the Market Access Podcast, Dr. Stefan Walzer sits down with Dr. Seye Abogunrin, a health economist at Roche, Switzerland, to move AI in market access from experimentation to execution. They explore where AI adds real value today — drafting dossier text, screening titles and abstracts, extracting data from full-text papers — and why out-of-the-box prompting isn't enough. Seye makes the case that AI delivers strong first drafts, not submission-ready evidence, and that the human must stay "in the lead" for scientific rigor and credibility. They also unpack the real blockers at scale — change management, compliance, and data leakage — and why fully leveraging AI may mean overhauling our processes, not just speeding them up. The conversation also looks at how to identify the use cases that are genuinely worth scaling, rather than adopting AI for the sake of it. And as AI becomes more capable, the bigger opportunity may be to rethink how market access work gets done — not simply to make existing processes faster. Stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast platform or listening directly on our website: MAP Podcasts — and if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to rate it and the podcast! MAP is the first and only bi-weekly market access podcast provided by MArS — and the global #1 podcast in the field of health economics. For more information about MArS Market Access and Pricing Strategy, visit: https://marketaccess4-0.com/ #MarketAccess #HealthEconomics #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AIinHealthcare #HEOR #EvidenceSynthesis #HTA #DigitalHealth #MAPPodcast #marketaccess #marketaccesspodcast

By the time most health economists get pulled in, the recipe is already set. In this episode of MAP – the Market Access Podcast, Dr. Stefan Walzer sits down with two industry veterans — Dr. Björn Schwander, Founder of AHEAD GmbH and a specialist in early health economic modeling, and Julie Frappier, senior health economist and Founder of TOWWERS — to make the case for moving early health economics upstream. The conversation reframes value as more than a financial number: the combination of clinical relevance, economic relevance, and affordability, aligned early across the "five Ps" — patients, prescribers, policymakers, payers, and producers. Björn and Julie explain why early models should be deliberately simple, built to test scenarios and surface the strongest value signals rather than chase false precision, and why embracing uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw. They also tackle the implementation risk too often ignored — illustrated by a CAR-T case in Quebec where it took a full year to treat the first patient after approval — and why an early "no-go" can be just as valuable as a green light. LinkedIn: Dr. Björn Schwander https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoern-schwander-phd-672040b/ Julie Frappier https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-frappier-b5642a3/ #MarketAccess #HealthEconomics #HEOR #EarlyModeling #RealWorldEvidence #HealthEconomicModeling #HTA #ValueBasedHealthcare #Reimbursement #MedTech #DigitalHealth #mAxInsights #marketaccesspodcast