China is making an effort to control drug costs.
A new way to buy essential drugs being tested in Anhui province caused prices to fall by as much as 90 percent. The system, which encourages drugmakers to compete on price and quality for state contracts, may go national and be widened to include other medicines, according to lobbyists representing 38 foreign drugmakers in China.
Foreign companies oppose that because they say it will force them to lower prices to compete with generic-drug makers. That may erode the profit earned from every prescription they sell in the world’s fastest-growing pharmaceutical market, which was worth $41.1 billion last year, according to IMS Health Inc.
Medicynical Note: What a concept, competition. You may recall that when the republican congress passed Medicare Part D, they purposefully refused to consider such type bidding and negotiation. They were, and are, the best congress money can buy.
Medicynic 