The State Council will speed up price reform in the field of Medicine

Source: China news.com on November 17, 2014, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council presided over the executive meeting of the State Council on November 16, 2014, and deployed to accelerate price reform As the most effective "baton" of the market, "price" is the core force to let the market play a decisive role The reform around price has become a hard bone that the market-oriented reform must gnaw Li Keqiang's deployment shows that after "returning" pricing power in various fields to the market, Chinese officials will also introduce more price reform measures to speed up the process of market-oriented reform It is worth noting that in the details of the executive meeting of the State Council, which was disclosed by the website of the Chinese government on the 16th, Li Keqiang's concerns about the reform of medical prices were mentioned in special paragraphs, which means that the price reform is expected to have a great action in the field of medicine In recent years, the government has been committed to adjusting the price formation mechanism from the "visible hand" of government administrative pricing to the market mechanism“ Invisible hand " The advantages of forming a market-oriented pricing mechanism are obvious: from the perspective of enterprises, it is helpful to break monopoly, optimize and upgrade enterprises and industries in fair market competition, and make good enterprises and products grow better; from the perspective of consumers, the market-oriented pricing mechanism will enable consumers to have full choice of products and services, so as to obtain more long-term benefits However, in the discussion and Research on accelerating the price reform, Li Keqiang admitted that the reform was "really not easy" He stressed that price reform is a key to the establishment of market mechanism If the price reform is not advanced, the key problems of market-oriented reform will be missed! Li Keqiang said frankly that there are still some issues that the government should not manage or not manage well in terms of price He stressed that price reform is an important part of promoting market-oriented reform, an important part of the transformation of government functions, and an important institutional construction of reducing the space for power rent-seeking The price reform is related to the vital interests of all the people, and it must be considered as a whole and carried forward steadily according to the accumulated experience of the reform and the bearing capacity of the society "Accelerating" and "to a greater extent" and other statements around price reform and market pricing also show that the official will speed up the process of this reform battle in the future More price reform measures are expected to come out one after another In addition to emphasizing that the "rhythm" of price reform will be accelerated, the executive meeting of the State Council also disclosed the "content" involved in price reform In a gradual and orderly way, we will reform the price formation mechanism of energy, transportation and environmental protection, dredge price conflicts, and steadily open up most professional service prices that have no direct relationship with residents' lives In a press release that described the details of the standing meeting, which was released by chinagov.cn on the 16th, Li Keqiang's attention to the price in the field of medicine was described in a special paragraph In a grass-roots investigation, a doctor told the prime minister that the price of his massage physical therapy service is only tens of yuan per hour, while in the "foot washing city" outside, the price of one hour massage service is hundreds of yuan Li Keqiang stressed that at present, the price of medical service fees in public hospitals is indeed too low, but there is still a phenomenon of high drug prices Therefore, we should gradually straighten out this unreasonable price mechanism through reform In fact, this statement has released two important reform signals: first, medical services: when it is difficult for the government to measure the cost uniformly, medical services will be priced in the future or by the market, so that the labor value of medical service providers can be reflected; second, drugs, the current pricing mode of "ceiling" of drug prices formulated by the government, may be adjusted It is worth noting that China Central Television quoted Peng Sen, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and vice chairman of the finance and Economic Committee, as saying that for a long time, like the price of some drugs, it used to make separate pricing, including differential pricing, including ceiling pricing Compared with these methods, there is a gap between the requirements of market economy and that of the whole medical reform Now we are fully qualified to put the prices in the catalogue of more than 1000 kinds of medical insurance under the jurisdiction of the main government into the market This series of signs indicate that the future price reform of the government in the field of medicine may have a big move One of the important reasons why the "rise and fall" more favorable consumer price reform is called "hard bone" is its possible price rise effect Niu Li, deputy director of the economic prediction Department of the National Information Center, told China news agency that in the past, China has kept the prices of some resources low Rationalizing prices through market-oriented reform can play a role in optimizing resource allocation, but we need to be alert to the hidden cost compensation in the process, so as to push up prices and increase people's spending And the worry of "one change, one rise" is one of the important reasons why price reform is a hard nut to crack To this end, Li Keqiang specially explained that the price reform does not mean "price increase", but to form a reasonable price mechanism with market demand pricing and "rise and fall" This can be verified by the reform of the pricing mechanism of refined oil A year ago, on the 8th day after Li Keqiang presided over the first executive meeting of the new State Council, which was of "opening" significance, China's refined oil pricing mechanism adjusted "boots landing" The government has greatly increased the role of the market in the price adjustment of refined oil by shortening the period of price adjustment of refined oil, removing the limit on the range of price adjustment and adjusting the affiliated oil With the price adjustment of refined oil becoming a required action to follow the market, the accusations of oil price adjustment have been eased, such as "only rising but not falling", "more rising but less falling" Li Keqiang said that the price of refined oil broke the rigid price mechanism in the past, and was completely priced by the market The "eight consecutive drops" that just came out showed that the price determined by the market is not necessarily a price increase In this, the market, the most sensitive signal of price guidance, plays a full role This kind of price fluctuates from rise to fall In the long run, it can better protect the interests of consumers than the mode of suppressing price by administrative means Li Keqiang reminded that government pricing seems to protect consumers on the surface, but in fact, in most areas, consumers' interests are not necessarily protected Market pricing actually gives consumers more rights to choose independently In the long run, it is beneficial to consumers This judgment has been verified in drug administrative pricing At present, the mainland's administrative intervention in drug prices is determined by setting the highest price According to the insiders, the ceiling of the drug price seems to control the price of the drug, but in practice, it leads to an obvious problem: because the price of the drug with high cost and good effect is closer to the ceiling, the space to provide kickbacks for the hospital in the drug price is relatively small; On the contrary, the drugs with low cost and poor quality get more operation space because the price is far away from the ceiling, which makes the phenomenon of "bad money expelling good money" appear in the drug market A drug price maker said frankly that such a situation left him in a dilemma: if the price is based on high-standard enterprises, it will leave more promotion space for low-standard enterprises If in order to limit the space of "public relations" and price based on low-cost drugs, all good enterprises will die, and ordinary people will not be able to take good drugs Market pricing should be well matched at the executive meeting of the State Council Li Keqiang pointed out that at present, CPI and PPI data continue to decline, and input prices in the international market are also at a low level, which is in the "window period" of price reform Based on this, he asked the relevant departments to make a detailed reform plan and start the price reform step by step It is necessary to form an open and transparent market-oriented pricing mechanism as soon as possible, and to promote it steadily so that the people can "bear" the price fluctuations that may arise from some reforms The above content shows that, as a matter of overall reform, the promotion of price reform needs not only courage and determination, but also appropriate timing and perfect matching Liu Enguo, a professor at the National Development Research Institute of Peking University, also analyzed the importance of timing and supporting means to reporters of China News Agency, taking the drug pricing reform that may have major actions in the future as an example He analyzed that in the absence of national insurance, the demand side of drugs lacks a collective bargaining platform to play games with drug manufacturers Individual patients have no resistance to price hikes by drug manufacturers In this case, if the government does not control the prices of relatively strong drug manufacturers, it may lead to the unrestricted rise of drug prices At present, with the improvement of the government led medical insurance covering the whole people, the medical insurance can form strength in the drug demand side through collective negotiation, instead of the administrative control and the drug manufacturers at the supply side to play games Moreover, the improvement of medical insurance payment means also helps to change the disorder of drug market Liu said that in the past, the payment of medical insurance to drugs was based on the price of a single drug, but at present, the payment of medical insurance is not based on the price of drugs, but on the "disease type" or even "number of people" "The change brought about by the way of payment is that the medication for patients is no longer the income but the cost of the hospital." for example, if the medical insurance determines that the treatment of appendicitis is x yuan, then the medical insurance will pay a fixed X Yuan to the hospital for every case of appendicitis treated by the hospital In this case, the income level of the hospital depends on whether doctors can use their professional level and choose drugs with higher cost performance If the price of a pharmaceutical factory rises arbitrarily, it will not be chosen by the hospital Therefore, Liu stressed that if the drug price is to be determined by the market, it is necessary to continue to improve the collective negotiation ability of medical insurance and the payment method of medical insurance In addition, the government should also strengthen the supervision of drug prices in and after the event, strengthen the anti-monopoly law enforcement of drug enterprises, increase the investigation and punishment of collusion in bidding, bid up prices, and abuse the dominant market position to make huge profits and other acts that damage the interests of consumers (Zhou Rui)