China has updated its list of medicines covered by national medical insurance, adding some new drugs with a focus on pediatrics and major illnesses such as cancer, hepatitis, and renal and cardiovascular diseases.<\/p>\n
China has a national medical insurance program, and the National Reimbursement Drug List (NRDL) names all the drugs covered by the insurance program, some in full (type A drugs) and others partially (type B). Patients must pay the full price out of pocket for those drugs outside the list, which means a huge financial burden, especially when new but more effective drugs are not covered.<\/p>\n
The update, the first since late 2009, saw the list grow by 15% to 2,535, among which 1,297 are Western-style meds, an 11% increase. The additions include some blockbuster meds like tenofovir, an antiviral drug to treat hepatitis B and HIV, and marketed by GSK as Viread, cancer drug gefitinib, sold under the brand name Iressa by AstraZeneca, and China\u2019s own non-small cell lung cancer med icotinib (Conmana).<\/p>\n
The drug prices of these three products were largely reduced last year as part of a negotiation with the ministry, and for example, GSK cut Viread\u2019s price in China by two-thirds last year, a move that obviously helped it earn a place in the updated drug list. In an interview by Reuters, a GSK spokesman said. \"We have already seen a major increase in the uptake of our Hep B medicine (Viread) since reducing its price by 67% last year and inclusion in the NDRL will drive further access around the country.\"<\/p>\n
Provincial-level governments are now requested to make their own lists by the end of July of this year. They can tweak a bit of the national list\u2019s type B drugs based on local medical needs, meaning they can add or delete a few and detail their own coverage rates for each drug. (Source: FiercePharma and Reuters)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has updated its list of medicines covered by national medical insurance, adding some new drugs with a focus on pediatrics and major illnesses such as cancer, hepatitis, and renal and cardiovascular diseases. China has a national medical insurance program, and the National Reimbursement Drug List (NRDL) names all the drugs covered by the insurance program, some in full (type A drugs) and others partially (type B). Patients must pay the full price out of pocket for those drugs outside the list, which means a huge financial burden, especially when new but more effective drugs are not covered. The update, the first since late 2009, saw the list grow by... Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicalnews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssri.com\/china\/e\/medicalnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}