Drug price regulation is facing collective resistance

Since the last round of national chemical price cuts started recently, the National Development and Reform Commission has hit a wall in the collection of drug prices. Yesterday, the website of the National Development and Reform Commission issued a notice urging pharmaceutical companies to report their factory prices. This is the second time that a drug company is notified of the ex-factory price of drugs.

It is understood that the work of submitting the ex-factory price started on September 1, 2012. The originally scheduled deadline for filing was December 31, 2012. However, due to a large number of companies failing to report in a timely manner, the National Development and Reform Commission extended the one-month reporting period. As of January 21st, there were still 2,959 companies in the country that did not report the ex-factory prices of drugs in 2011. Well-known foreign drug companies such as Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and other large domestic companies such as Harbin Pharmaceutical Group, Tong Ren Tang, Yunnan Baiyao, etc. among them. At present, there are 7,008 legally registered pharmaceutical companies across the country, and more than 42% of drug companies have not reported on schedule.

People in the pharmaceutical industry bluntly stated that pharmaceutical companies are not welcome to such ex-factory declarations, because they will be the basis for the next round of price adjustments and will be filed.

The price of drugs is heavy. "The company has reported drug costs and prices several times in previous years. The purpose of the National Development and Reform Commission is to find out the actual cost and profits of the company." Yesterday, a person in charge of a domestic pharmaceutical company that has completed reporting told reporters .

"The National Development and Reform Commission has done a lot of statistics, but it is difficult to verify the data." Medical personnel in the industry admitted to reporters that the production links and technological processes of pharmaceutical companies are not exactly the same, and raw material purchase prices are also inconsistent, and various types of costs are also very different. The data in the hands of the National Development and Reform Commission will be greatly discounted.

In fact, at the beginning of 2013, the “rebate door” incident of the People’s Hospital of Gaozhou City in Guangdong put the “high drug price” issue before the public again. “Although the National Development and Reform Commission has organized a number of rounds of drug price cuts, the moisture in the middle of drug prices is still very large, and the case where the difference between the ex-factory price and the retail price is more than 10 times is common,” said the person in charge of the drug company.

“The price difference between retail price and ex-factory price, in addition to the factors of the manufacturers themselves, the general environment can not be ignored. If the spread is further compressed, it will be unfavorable for companies that adopt the general agent sales model. This also makes the company not too The big power initiatively applied for ex-factory prices, or made false reports and reported ex-factory prices," the official said.

It is worth mentioning that currently, the penalties for collecting price information are not perfect. A number of pharmaceutical companies all said that it is not clear at present that if the factory price is not declared, how will the National Development and Reform Commission deal with it, and the country does not have detailed documents. "If you do not report, you may encounter obstacles in the pricing of new medical insurance products," said one drug company.

Foreign companies "cover"

Different from the round of cost investigation in 2010, the investigation of the ex-factory price of pharmaceutical companies requires that pharmaceutical companies provide evidence such as invoices. This made it difficult for companies to report, "especially the end of the year, various companies are doing accounts, the financial sector is under great pressure. In the 'protest' of many drug companies, the National Development and Reform Commission was postponed for a month." The responsible person said that In the 2010 cost survey, nearly 760 enterprises were hurried by the National Development and Reform Commission.

In the eyes of many drug companies, the National Development and Reform Commission requires that companies report some problems. A number of pharmaceutical companies stated that the taxation and industry and commerce departments all have production annual reports and tax payment vouchers in their hands. This is true data. It is certain that companies will report “moisture”, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

Compared with domestic pharmaceutical companies, foreign pharmaceutical companies have encountered more problems. The reporter saw that during the investigation of ex-factory prices of the National Development and Reform Commission, special statistics were made on raw material prices and patent information for foreign patented drugs. However, it is surprising that there were still 54 foreign pharmaceutical companies that had not completed the declaration that was supposed to be closed on November 30, 2012.

A person in the pharmaceutical industry who declined to be named stated that many of the raw materials of foreign patented drugs are trade secrets, not to mention the price cannot be disclosed, and even the suppliers are kept secret. How these companies may report the core data “overhand”.