Behind the doubling of the price of some drugs, there are two main factors

[market analysis of pharmaceutical Station] in 2019, when the 4 + 7 volume purchase was implemented and the price of drugs was reduced, some pharmacies also saw the price of drugs doubled Some patients said, "in the past, calcium gluconate injection only needed a few pieces in a box, now it has risen to more than 50, and there are other drugs that used to only need more than 20 pieces, now it has more than quadrupled." So, what are the reasons behind the rise in the price of these drugs? According to the analysis of the industry, on the one hand, the mobilization of drug prices is affected by the market environment, on the other hand, there are also cases of malicious monopoly and hoarding of goods In terms of market environment, in recent years, environmental protection and high pressure continue to affect the chemical API industry, and many enterprises have stopped production for rectification, even closed down In the case of insufficient supply of APIs, it is inevitable that the price of downstream drugs will rise Moreover, compared with the domestic API manufacturers, in recent years, the quality requirements of drugs have become more and more strict If there is any problem, there will be the risk of losing the market, which will bring hidden dangers to the supply Take valsartan, an important API, as an example According to industry data, as of April 2019, the price of valsartan was 1950 yuan / kg, which has continued to rise 11.43% since May, reaching a new high in the past 10 years As far as the production enterprises are concerned, the production of their main suppliers decreased significantly in 2018 due to the "carcinogen" incident of valsartan, and they were restricted from entering the European and American markets The CEP certificate of another major valsartan manufacturer was also suspended by EDQM in Europe Valsartan raw materials are the main drugs for the treatment of hypertension The interruption of supply chain of valsartan leads to the situation that the market is in short supply According to the guideline for rational use of Chinese hypertension, there are 298 million adults with hypertension in China According to the data in the industry, the market scale of antihypertensive drugs in China is over 80 billion yuan at present In the context of expanding market demand, the price of valsartan is bound to rise Some enterprises said that their products valsartan products have been supplied to the European market for a long time, and the relevant events did not affect the company The first quarter report shows that the global market demand for valsartan products of the company has increased, and customer orders have increased sharply As far as the business behavior is concerned, many drug price increases this year are found to be related to monopoly problems Once this happens, the price is likely to skyrocket According to the industry, the shortage of raw materials, the decrease of manufacturers, and the price rise are the main reasons But some APIs are in demand and cheap, so it's hard for manufacturers to earn high profits, so they will have a bad idea In fact, in order to ensure the supply of APIs, China has also started from many aspects, encouraging the production and supply of APIs in short supply, adopting "zero tolerance" for monopoly and "zero tariff" for some APIs
For example, on January 28, 2019, the Ministry of industry and information technology issued the notice of four departments on publishing the list of construction units for the centralized production base of batch of small drugs (short drugs), which will carry out the construction of the centralized production base of short drugs, break the bottleneck for the lack of power for the production of short drugs in China, further guarantee the supply of short drugs in China, and provide guarantee for the quality, safety and drug demand of the people 。 The industry suggests that in order to ensure the supply of drugs in short supply, it is also necessary to improve the monitoring and early warning mechanism For drugs that are clinically necessary, easy to be short of, and have poor substitutability, it is necessary to strengthen the storage, unified procurement or designated production to ensure the supply, so as to prevent the unreasonable price rise of urgently needed and commonly used drugs At the same time, it is also necessary to support some low-cost drug manufacturers with low profits, "improve the enthusiasm of drug enterprises in production, ensure supply, and reasonably control the price rise of short drugs."