Five myths about emerging markets

1. You can have an 'emerging markets strategy'
Emerging markets are nothing like one another: an Argentinian or Brazilian denied an expensive new drug will usually just go and get a court to order his insurer or the state to pay for it; most Mexicans never really find out what's wrong.

2. You can decide whether you want to introduce 
Access to medicines is mostly about politics, not IP. No government in Europe or North America will do much to help you, whatever blustering they do in the media. Bayer discovered this to their cost in India.

3. You can let each subsidiary act independently
Anyone can find out anything about global price deals. For example, Roche has deep discounts for public reimbursement in Indonesia. It is on none of their global websites but easy to find in Bahasa Indonesia.

4. The growing private insurance market is good news for innovation
You will read a lot about the rapid rise of private insurance coverage in China and bullish reports about India. These policies often have low lifetime cash payout limits or act more as savings plans than as true insurance. In a lot of markets, the rate-limiting issue is not who will pay but who will diagnose or manage treatment.

5. The solution is local manufacture
Yes but you can't build plants everywhere, much less R&D centres. Anyway, you'll miss out on the real innovations in access that will come back to change business in Europe. Gilead's 90% discount to Egypt on hepatitis C treatment in return for very high volume, for example. Indians are delivering cancer care through telemedicine.