During the latest Five-Year Plan, health authorities have sought to balance drug affordability and quality, as well as promote market stability and fairness.
China has made significant progress in expanding and modernizing its health insurance system under the latest Five-Year Plan, officials announced at a State Council press conference Thursday.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan, spanning 2021 to the end of this year, health authorities have implemented tiered pricing mechanisms to ensure medication affordability while upholding pharmaceutical quality standards, said Zhang Ke, head of the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA).
“We actively promoted fairness and accessibility … with 1.327 billion people enrolled in the national basic medical insurance program in 2024,” Zhang said, noting that the enrollment rate has remained stable at approximately 95%.
Roughly 20 billion medical visits were reimbursed during the plan period via the country’s national medical insurance scheme, with a 1.6-fold increase from 2020 to 2024.
In addition, 402 types of drugs have been added to the national medical insurance drug list since 2021, which now encompasses 3,159 drugs total.
In response to concerns regarding the country’s drug procurement process — specifically how rock-bottom prices were potentially distorting the market and compromising quality — Shi Zihai, deputy head of the NHSA, said that evaluations no longer solely rely on the lowest bid as the determining factor.
Officials have previously said that such changes aim to prevent companies with higher pricing from being unfairly penalized. Meanwhile, companies that win procurement bids with low-priced products must publicly justify such prices, as well as commit to not selling below cost, thereby discouraging predatory pricing.
Drugs selected through bidding must not have violated quality management standards in the previous two years.
Shi also described the development of a national price list for online-listed drugs, which will display price information from various regions, identify abnormal prices, and facilitate continuous rectification of unreasonably high online-listed prices.
This data, combined with online and offline pharmacy price comparisons, will culminate in the launch of a public price-comparison app across China’s 31 provinces and regions, facilitating improved access and transparency.
To date, eight batches of drug price risk adjustments have been made, resulting in 566 companies adjusting 726 drug specification costs.
Shi also reiterated the NHSA’s opposition to pharmaceutical companies abusing pricing autonomy through practices such as medical kickbacks, incentive-driven sales, and monopolistic control of distribution, which disrupt market order and increase the public’s medication cost burden.
He emphasized the NHSA’s support for high-quality innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, adding: “While adhering to market-driven pricing reforms and respecting companies’ autonomous pricing rights, we will also enhance the government’s role in improving drug price governance and maintaining fair market order.”
Editor: Tom Arnstein.
(Header image: VCG)
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