Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg / Bloomberg
Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg / Bloomberg
Drug makers from AstraZeneca Plc en GlaxoSmithKline Plc on BeiGene Ltd. has agreed to reduce prices of some of their latest innovative medicines in China by an average of 50.6% to be covered by the country’s national insurance fund.
A total of 119 new therapies – covering everything from lung disease and diabetes to cancer and lupus – have been added for coverage by the state-run medical safety net after protracted negotiations, the National Health care Security Administration said in a notice issued on its website Monday.
The average price reduction is 10 percentage points less than last year a relief for both domestic and foreign drugmakers, who have seen their profits weakened by pressure from Beijing to cut healthcare costs. Companies are eager to get their treatments on the list, even at strong discounts, to gain access to China’s pharmaceutical market, the second largest in the world.
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Patients in China will have to pay only a small fraction of the cost of this medicine out of their own pocket, as most of the bill is covered by China’s National Medical Insurance Fund of 2.44 billion yuan ($ 373 billion), which is more than 95% of the 1.4 billion people in the country. The list has been updated annually with new entries since 2017, when Beijing accelerated its campaign to bring the best medicine to its growing middle class as quickly and cheaply as possible.
In total, Chinese patients can now use state insurance to pay for 2,800 medicines. Beijing has also managed to cut more than 40% on average for 14 drugs, with annual sales exceeding 1 billion yuan each. The new version of the medicine reimbursement list will take effect from 1 March.
The drugs that made it to the latest list include AstraZeneca’s cancer therapy Zoladex. Brukinsa, the first cancer drug from China ever approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developed by Beijing-based BeiGene, also made the list.
Glaxo drugs Benlysta and Volibris, which treat lupus and high blood pressure in the lungs, respectively, made the list. Other top-of-the-line therapies from multinational companies have been an antidote to diabetes Novo Nordisk S / A, medicine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease developed by Astra, and an ulcerative colitis therapy by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.
The latest 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 million new cancer patients annually . Such treatments included the treatments developed by Chinese companies BeiGene, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co. and Shanghai Junshi Biosciences Co.
The list also highlights treatments for Covid-19, such as antiviral ribavirin and arbidol, although China is largely inflamed after the outbreak was brought under control in Wuhan a year ago.
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It is unknown how deeply companies have committed themselves to individual therapies. The National Health care Safety administration has in the past reached agreements with some drug manufacturers to withhold the details of price reductions.
For foreign drugmakers, the competition in China has brought significant sacrifices. New medicines are often brought to the Chinese market at lower prices than those sold in the West, but are still confronted by competition from a growing legion of Chinese biotechnology companies that are developing similar medicines that can be sold more. cheap.
Global pharmaceutical companies’ older non-patented medicines are also being reduced by prices. In a separate national campaign in which China’s public hospitals buy generic medicines in large quantities, prices have fallen by as much as 90%.
– With help from John Liu, Claire Che and Dong Lyu