China Medical News

Most commonly used cancer drugs have been included in China’s basic medical insurance program, and the government is continuing negotiations on the price of expensive drugs with the aim of including them, the country’s top medical security authority said.

China has included 34 drugs that treat major cancers in the national basic medical insurance program after successful price negotiations with pharmaceutical companies in the past three years, the National Healthcare Security Administration said recently. The prices of most of the drugs have been cut by more than half, and patients will spend even less after reimbursement from the medical insurance fund, the administration said.

The pace of progress has been accelerating. Two cancer drugs were approved for inclusion in the medical insurance program after their prices were cut by more than 50 percent in 2016, while 15 were approved in 2017 and 17 were included in October. The administration also has recognized significant demand from patients with other serious diseases. It is considering engaging in price negotiations on drugs used to treat those patients this year, the administration said. “The number of patients with some other serious diseases such as heart disease and hepatitis B is also high, and they’ve also appealed for more affordable drugs,” it said. The administration said it will continue to try to include new cancer drugs in the program after they are proven effective.

There are an estimated 3.8 million new cancer cases in China every year, with cancer becoming a leading cause of death, with the incidence of some cancers, such as lung and breast cancer, rising rapidly, the Cancer Hospital at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said in a report last year.

The National Medical Products Administration, China’s top drug regulator, said in January that it has accelerated inspection and approval procedures for new drugs developed overseas that are urgently needed by Chinese patients. A number of them, including cancer drugs, will be available on the domestic market this year.

In many European countries and the United States, price negotiations are routine between commercial insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. But in China, such negotiations have been held between the government and pharmaceutical companies only in the past few years. (Source: China Daily)