The advantages of controlling the use of foreign drugs in many places will disappear soon

Source: China enterprise daily, March 24, 2015, recently, the reporter found that since the Spring Festival of 2015, many hospitals below the second level, most community hospitals and community health service stations in Beijing no longer provide foreign drugs such as calcium to patients, but provide similar domestic products Not only in Beijing, but also in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other places, there are news that large hospitals have stopped using and restricted the use of foreign drugs Industry analysts pointed out that although the reasons for restricting the use of foreign drugs vary from place to place, with the strengthening of the policy of controlling medical insurance expenditure, the price control of foreign drugs will be further tightened in the future, and the pattern distribution between foreign drug companies and local drug companies will also usher in a reconstruction To control the use of foreign drugs more often, a community medical service station chief in Dongcheng District of Beijing said, "the reason is not clear, because the drugs supplied by the community health service center are all distributed uniformly If the drugs are not distributed, we will not have them This has happened in the past." At the same time, the person in charge told reporters that there is a big difference in the list of Medicare drugs used by community centers and top three hospitals, especially in the number and types of foreign drugs A staff member of Beijing pharmaceutical company told reporters that the competent department will adjust the hospital medication according to the use of medical insurance funds, and there was a precedent before the limited supply of foreign drugs "In the past few years, the charitable deposit was within the scope of medical insurance reimbursement, which has become the whole self expense in recent years." The adjustment of the use of foreign drugs is more obvious in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other places According to the reporter, not long ago, a third class hospital in Shaoxing announced that it would suspend the purchase or limited use of 16 drugs, 14 of which are foreign drugs Later, Jiangsu post third level hospital also stopped the use of 31 kinds of foreign-funded drugs, such as aluminum and magnesium carbonate tablets The enterprises involved almost cover all foreign-funded and joint-venture pharmaceutical enterprises, such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Lilly, Abbott Glaxo and Roche, which are sold in China IMS, an international medical and health consulting service company, told reporters that with the deepening of medical reform, the hospital's willingness to control costs has been increasing, and the most simple way to reduce the price of drugs is to restrict foreign drugs with higher prices According to the reporter, hospitals in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other places stop using and limit the use of foreign drugs, which is related to the hospital's requirements for drug companies to reduce prices A salesman of a foreign-funded pharmaceutical enterprise analyzed to reporters that the impact of individual hospitals on the restrictions or suspension of the use of individual varieties on foreign-funded pharmaceutical enterprises is not significant The real impact of foreign-funded pharmaceutical enterprises is the adjustment of the bidding mechanism for drug procurement It is understood that "bargain" has become the core word of a new round of drug bidding in all provinces In the drug bidding in Hunan Province, Bayer, AstraZeneca and other foreign funded pharmaceutical companies abandoned the bid because they could not accept the price reduction The reporter learned from the enterprises participating in the bidding that the bid rejection rate of Bayer 36 varieties was 75%; that of bringer Ingelheim 21 varieties was 67%; and that of AstraZeneca 24 varieties was 46% And among those winning the bid, the price is 11% - 55% lower than that of previous years "We had expected that this year's price might continue to be lowered, but we didn't expect that it would come so soon or so vigorously." A middle-level foreign drug company involved in the bidding told reporters "There is no way to supply, only to abandon the bid." And that's far more painful for foreign drug companies There is continuous news that in 2015, the independent pricing policy for the original research drug will be cancelled and the market pricing mechanism will be changed Once this policy is implemented, it will inevitably lead to a huge impact on the profits of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises with the original research drug as the profit center The advantages of original research drugs are about to disappear It is said that the original research drugs have always been the trump card for foreign pharmaceutical enterprises to compete for the market in China Not only are the prices several times or even dozens of times different from the domestic generic drugs, but also they have lower market access threshold and can enter the drug catalog of most countries The data shows that the number of original drugs in the market only accounts for 10% of the total amount of drugs, while its sales volume accounts for nearly 30% of the total amount of hospital drug sales According to the reporter, in the drug bidding of Anhui Province in 2015, there were strict regulations on the use proportion of the original research drugs and patent drugs, requiring three-level hospitals, county-level hospitals, central hospitals, village clinics, township hospitals and community health centers to use no more than 40%, 30% and 20% of these drugs respectively, which were included in the integrated management statistics In 2014, in the bidding for basic drugs in Shandong, Guangdong and other provinces, except for a few enterprises such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, most foreign pharmaceutical enterprises such as Roche and Sanofi chose to give up A person in the pharmaceutical distribution industry said that at present, the main reason for foreign-funded enterprises to withdraw from the centralized procurement bidding is the price problem Foreign-funded pharmaceutical enterprises would rather withdraw from the competition than break the current price system "The national policy is to expand the beneficiaries of medical insurance We should not only increase the investment in medical insurance, but also strictly control the expenditure on medical insurance If foreign pharmaceutical companies do not reduce their prices, they will be replaced by generic drugs." The industry person said In response, industry insiders pointed out that in the past, due to the independent pricing of original research drugs and other reasons, foreign pharmaceutical companies were not enthusiastic about entering the base drug catalog However, with the adjustment of the list of basic drugs, more and more foreign enterprises have been included in the original research of drugs At the same time, many provinces have begun to take the approach of "up and down linkage" between basic drugs and non basic drugs in drug bidding Foreign enterprises can only choose to reduce prices to compete with local enterprises or give up this market as a whole Industry data shows that by 2015, the scale of essential drugs in the pharmaceutical market will reach 343.1 billion yuan, accounting for about 20% of the whole pharmaceutical market, and this number is still growing "The high bid rejection rate of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises in Hunan may be the beginning In the future, foreign enterprises may give up more market to domestic enterprises, but the proportion of changes needs to be observed after the bidding of all parts of the country Because from the heart, foreign pharmaceutical companies are not willing to lose the market At the same time, the relevant domestic departments should also take into account the quality of drugs at low prices, while foreign drugs are still very competitive in this respect, so how to find a balance point between the two, the relevant departments and pharmaceutical enterprises should continue to explore " A senior member of the group said According to the Research Report of IMS, a pharmaceutical market research consulting company, at present, multinational pharmaceutical companies only account for 24% of the Chinese pharmaceutical market, which is significantly lower than the share of 27.7% four years ago "Based on the observation in recent quarters, the market growth rate of foreign enterprises is slower than the market average, so the proportion of foreign enterprises is expected to continue to decline." The report states
According to the above-mentioned sales personnel of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises, although the price of imported drugs is much higher than that of domestic generic drugs, the product quality is relatively stable, so first-line doctors will also tend to use foreign drugs for patients If foreign pharmaceutical enterprises really liberalize the price and compete with domestic pharmaceutical enterprises, with better reputation of doctors and product control, the market share will not decline much "The key is whether the enterprise is determined to trade the price for the market.".