The leaders of NDRC indeed exchanged ideas to decontrol prices of pharmaceutical products at the meeting, and more meetings will be held to discuss it; subsequently, National Health and Family Planning Commission of the P.R.C. and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the P.R.C. will negotiate to form the final scheme for the approval of the State Council.
Take pharmaceutical products in the basic medical insurance drug catalog as an example: prices of this part of pharmaceutical products will be negotiated by multiple ministries and commissions. The existing pricing mechanism of pharmaceutical products in the basic medical insurance drug catalog is: NDRC and provincial price departments formulate the maximum retail price, provincial bidding departments set the actual supply price through bidding, pharmaceutical products of enterprises enter hospitals for cost plus sales, and the medical insurance separately offers reimbursement according to medical insurance level of pharmaceutical products. There is the hospital secondary bargain in partial regions.
After NDRC decontrols maximum retail price, there will be big problems how the drug price is linked with reimbursement system of medical insurance and with the pharmaceutical product bidding system held by the department of health. As quality of pharmaceutical products in China differs much, NDRC offers separate pricing for partial pharmaceutical products, and how the separately pricing system will be linked up? As summarized by an insider, the details are still not clear, the price reducing schedule is delayed again and again, and the price reducing for Chinese patent medicines several years ago has not been introduced by now. NDRC, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the P.R.C. and National Health and Family Planning Commission of the P.R.C. also need to communicate regarding this price decontrol, which shall be approved by the State Council, therefore it takes long time for the final scheme to hit the ground.
