Xinhua Net, Beijing, December 10 (Reported by Zhang Quan and Qu Ting) The National Healthcare Security Administration recently issued the Opinions on Regulating Current Drug Prices, clearly deepening the reform of the group purchasing organization system, and insisting on the direction of “group purchasing, linking quantity with price, and integrating bidding and purchasing” to promote the drug price to return to a reasonable level.

The group purchasing organization system is an important part of China’s joint measures taken to solve the problem of “high cost of getting medical treatment” and “high price of drugs”. In 2018, the group purchasing organization system was put into trial in 11cities, and a total of 25 drugs were selected. The average price of selected drugs dropped by 52%, and the largest drop exceeded 90%. In September this year, the scope of the pilot program was expanded to the whole country. The executive meeting of the State Council held on November 20 further proposed to expand the scope of group purchasing and the selected drugs.

According to the opinions of experts, the group purchasing of drugs is conducive to realizing the “group purchasing” effect, while reducing the unreasonable expenses in the circulation, thereby greatly reducing the price of drugs. Meanwhile, the “consistency evaluation” is used as the criterion of generic drugs for entering the group purchasing, which will help improve the level of drug use by the people.

In order to give play to the role of medical insurance in guiding the price of drugs, the Opinions also proposes to formulate the payment standards for medical insurance drugs based on generic names and adjust it from time to time, to improve the negotiation mechanism for access to an open and transparent directory of medical insurance drugs, and to improve the consultative management for designated institutions, strengthen the price supervision and information disclosure of drugs paid by medical insurance funds.

The Opinions also clarified a series of measures such as promoting the formation of a reasonable price difference and price relations, and managing the prices of narcotic drugs and Class I psychotropic drugs according to law.