Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg / Bloomberg
Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg / Bloomberg
Pharmacists of AstraZeneca Plc i GlaxoSmithKline Plc a BeiGene Ltd. has agreed to reduce the prices of some of its newest innovative medicines in China by an average of 50.6% in order to be covered by the country’s national insurance fund.
A total of 119 new therapies, ranging from lung disease and diabetes to cancers and lupus, were added to the state health safety network to cover them after the negotiations, the National Health care The Security Administration said in a notice posted to its website Monday.
The average price reduction is less than 10 percentage points last year, a relief for domestic and foreign drug manufacturers, who have seen their profits eroded thanks to Beijing’s push to reduce health care costs. Companies are eager to include their treatments on the list even with heavy discounts in order to access the Chinese pharmaceutical market, the second largest in the world.
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Patients in China would only have to pay a small fraction of the cost of these drugs out of their own pockets, as most of the bill will be borne by the 2.44 trillion yuan (373,000 yuan) national health insurance fund. million dollars) from China, which covers more than 95% of the country’s 1.4 billion people. The list is updated annually with new entries since 2017, when Beijing accelerated its campaign to bring the best drugs to its growing middle class as quickly and cheaply as possible.
In total, Chinese patients can now take out state insurance to pay for 2,800 medicines. Beijing also managed to reduce prices by more than 40% on average for 14 drugs whose annual sales exceed 1 billion yuan. The new version of the medical drug reimbursement list will be effective March 1st.
Among the drugs that appeared on the most recent list is AstraZeneca Zoladex Cancer Therapy. Brukinsa, the first cancer drug in China to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developed by Beijing-based BeiGene, also made the list.
The drugs Glaxo Benlysta and Volibris, which treat lupus and high blood pressure in the lungs, respectively, topped the list. Other first-line therapies by multinationals were an anti-diabetes drug Novo Nordisk S / A, a drug for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease developed by Astra and an ulcerative colitis therapy for Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.
Recent inclusions include popular immune cancer therapies known as PD-1 inhibitors, cancer treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight tumors, a priority for Beijing, as China has about 4 millions of new cancer patients each year. These treatments include those developed by Chinese companies BeiGene, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. i Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.
The list also highlights treatments for Covid-19, such as antivirals ribavirin and arbidol, although China has largely contained outbreaks after the outbreak was controlled a year ago in Wuhan.
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It is unknown to what extent companies have committed to individual therapies. The National Health care In the past, the Security Administration has reached agreements with some drug manufacturers to retain the details of price cuts.
For foreign drug manufacturers, competition in China has led to significant sacrifices. New drugs are often brought to the Chinese market at lower prices than those sold in the West, but they still face competition from a growing legion of Chinese biotech companies developing similar drugs that can be sold more cheap.
Old drugs from global pharmaceutical companies that have not been patented are also facing price cuts. In an independent national campaign in which public hospitals in China buy generic drugs in bulk, prices have dropped by up to 90%.
– With the assistance of John Liu, Claire Che and Dong Lyu