There is no "conspiracy" behind the high price of imported drugs

Source: on January 23, 2015, the price of imported drugs attracted attention again due to a case of reselling India's Gleevec In addition to focusing on the high prices of these imported drugs, we also habitually compare the prices of these drugs produced in the same factory in different countries Each time, we come to the conclusion that the prices of drugs in China are particularly expensive The most unacceptable thing is that Hong Kong is also much cheaper than the mainland Countless experts have interpreted the price gap from their own standpoint and purpose, and the moral hazard caused by it is also lamentable There is not much to be said about the single drug, greavel It is an undeniable fact that the efficacy of high priced innovative drugs in China has long been confirmed by clinical research No matter how expensive it is, it is more effective than the "magic medicine" like the Chinese Lingzhi treasure that once sold to tens of thousands No one is willing to think that the existence of such high prices is related to the cost of research and development In fact, in terms of product pricing of any company, R & D cost is not the biggest consideration After an innovative drug goes on the market, its pricing principle mainly depends on how many patients the new drug faces That's why no one has ever criticized the price of high blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs or antibiotics After all, there are enough patients for these drugs, such as diabetes In China, for example, the number of patients to face is nearly 100 million Naturally, the pricing of these drugs should consider whether hundreds of millions of people can afford them For companies investing in new drugs, the more patients there are, the greater the return In a sense, the pricing rule of this industry is that the more patients, the cheaper the price, the less patients, and the higher the price For example, the high price of Gleevec is still a problem A targeted treatment drug needs patients with suitable genotype to use Generally, patients who meet this requirement only account for about 20% of patients with the disease Because of this, the number of patients who need to use these drugs is much smaller It's not as cheap as the drugs that hundreds of millions of patients can use But for patients, it's really difficult to understand the reasons, and always find some reasons These reasons seem to have the color of "conspiracy theory" from the perspective of industry personages For example, the high price is due to the need for commercial bribery of doctors; for example, the high price is due to the fact that doctors and hospitals rely on kickbacks to earn money In fact, the above reasons are not true They have been repeatedly mentioned because we always need to find a reason to make ourselves feel better and make ourselves think that the high price of these drugs is unreasonable It may be easier for people to think that if they do not have the ability to pay, it is definitely not their own fault, but the fault of others The reason why the price of the same drug is lower than that of China is easy to find out Last year, price officials from the national development and Reform Commission explained that Hong Kong's drug prices are cheaper than those of the mainland, which is that taxes also account for a part of China's imported drug prices Internationally, there is no corresponding reimbursement system for the high price of imported drugs in the Chinese market This is a fact that we often avoid Any country, such as Brazil, even forces some imported drugs to reduce prices under the condition of forced imitation, but the basis of price negotiation is to reduce prices, which are reimbursed by the government As long as there is reimbursement guarantee, pharmaceutical enterprises are equal to obtaining a guaranteed market prospect, and appropriate price reduction is also reasonable and acceptable to enterprises In China, however, the way of reimbursement for high-cost drugs seems to be a long way For example, when the patent expires in China, the national health insurance did not include it in the reimbursement scope Is there no other way for Chinese patients to buy generic drugs from India? Of course, but it's not necessarily suitable for China's national conditions or difficult to implement For example, we can implement forced imitation license; the extreme way is to learn from India, release water on patent issues, and let local enterprises copy freely For patients, whether they can consider giving them the right to purchase Indian generic drugs without medical insurance reimbursement to those who are unable to purchase imported original research drugs If you remember the Oscar winning film "Dallas buyer's Club", you should remember that the protagonist is fighting for the freedom to use some methods to treat himself in the face of life-threatening diseases At the end of the film, he gets this freedom We don't need to find a reason for the high price of drugs We need to take the moral commanding point to blame the ruthlessness of enterprises The essence of high price is not complicated We don't need to prove that there is a culprit or "conspiracy" behind it After all, when pharmaceutical companies invest in the development of these high priced drugs, no one believes they can succeed