Li Keqiang chaired executive meeting of the State Council on November 15 to speed up the deployment of price reform, during which the relevant programs such as health care price reform were widely discussed by the attendees.
The medical service charges of the public hospitals were indeed too low at present, however there are still artificially high drug prices, as stressed by Li Keqiang, therefore, reform was required to gradually straighten out this unreasonable price mechanism.
The most possible breach of drug price reform is the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). As disclosed by Li Pumin-the Secretary General of NDRC in late October, a batch of approval matters would continue to be cancelled and delegated, and therein the field of medicine was included. Later on, some media disclosed that internal meeting of NDRC discussed to fully decontrol pharmaceutical price.
However, decontrol of pharmaceutical price does not mean all-round marketization. The reform direction of centralized purchase system by bidding that poses more impact on drug price is still undefined. National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China promised to introduce new centralized purchase document for pharmaceutical products in June 2014. However, there has been no such document so far.
