The Third Plenary meeting of top Communist Party leaders in Beijing last November concluded with a rallying cry for reform that will have systemic consequences for pharma manufacturing and distribution. A policy document released alongside the meeting called for the acceleration of health system reform, particularly of public hospitals, while restructuring pharmaceutical prices and reimbursement procedures. At stake is a drug market that McKinsey estimates could be worth more than US$310bn in retail sales by 2020 – second only to the US – as the government attempts to make some form of affordable healthcare available to all.
The aim is to reduce the cost of medicines via a root-and-branch overhaul of the way drugs are approved, priced and distributed, while improving quality control measures applied to domestic drugmakers, which typically produce cheaper alternatives to the high-priced but more reliable drugs sold by multinational corporations (MNCs).
The drive is accompanied by a corresponding crackdown on an endemic culture of kickbacks by drugs firms to doctors and other medical professionals, which enveloped GlaxoSmithKline in a global ‘incentives’ scandal late last year.
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