[Editorial Review of Workers' Daily]
Original title: Let dishonest pharmaceutical enterprises "get points deducted" and "get on the road" to better protect the effectiveness of medical reform
Worker's Daily - commentator of China Industrial Network Han Yunchao
Further enriching regulatory means, combating all forms of medical insurance borers, and preventing those with ulterior motives from offsetting the reform results are the common vision of relevant institutional initiatives, and also the direction of future reform in the pharmaceutical field.
According to the Xinhua News Agency on May 5, recently, the National Health Insurance Bureau released the "particularly serious" and "serious" credit evaluation results of price bidding and purchase (Issue 9), summarizing the situation of 25 pharmaceutical enterprises rated as "particularly serious" and "serious" as of March 31, 2024. The remarks of the announcement show that the credit rating of price bidding and procurement is mainly determined by the amount of bribery, improper price behavior, disruption of centralized procurement order and other severity. For example, a single bribe of more than 10000 yuan is "average", a single bribe of more than 100000 yuan is "medium", a single bribe of more than 300000 yuan is "serious", and a single bribe of more than 2 million yuan is "particularly serious". According to the credit rating of the pharmaceutical enterprise, measures such as reminding, warning, risk warning, disclosure of dishonest information can be taken until the enterprise is involved in the case or all medical consumables are connected to the network, bidding or distribution qualifications are restricted or suspended.
The above notification is the ninth time that the National Health Insurance Bureau has announced the dishonesty of related enterprises since August 2020, when it comprehensively established the credit evaluation system for drug prices and bidding and procurement. The dishonesty behavior of relevant pharmaceutical enterprises mainly includes failure to purchase as agreed in the agreement, which has a serious impact on the clinical treatment order; Give kickbacks or illegitimate benefits to relevant personnel of medical institutions, so as to enable them to obtain additional trading opportunities, competitive advantages, sales volume, etc. In addition, illegal tax related and improper price behaviors in the purchase and sale of medicine are also listed as dishonest matters.
In the supply chain of medical resources, pharmaceutical enterprises play an important role. The price and operation of the drugs they provide should comply with market rules such as fairness, legality, honesty and credibility, and quality price consistency. However, some pharmaceutical enterprises have "twisted their brains", and engaged in "small actions" such as profit transmission, illegal bidding, driving up drug prices, and refusing to perform purchase and sales or distribution contracts in the process of pharmaceutical purchase and sales. Relevant behaviors not only disrupted the order of medicine purchase and sale, corrupted the industry ethos, but also swallowed up valuable medical insurance funds, increasing the burden of patients. It has been reported that a rebate rate of 55.92% exists for a lipoic acid tablet produced by a pharmaceutical company, which is equivalent to more than half of the money actually used to pay the rebate for every box of drugs purchased by patients for 63 yuan.
As a powerful tool for medical insurance supervision, the medical price and bidding and purchasing credit evaluation system has played a significant role in combating the inflated drug price and curbing unfair competition. This system is like the "traffic rules" in this field. Pharmaceutical enterprises will be "deducted" or even "suspended" if they violate and disrupt the fair trade market behavior such as "running the red light" and "compacting the line". Today, under the pressure of interviews and credit evaluation from the medical insurance department, more than 70 drugs have voluntarily lowered their prices, with an average reduction of 21.58%, saving about 94 million yuan in total. In addition, some enterprises have also repaired their credit by returning improper earnings or assisting in the investigation and treatment of upstream operators. It can be said that through the implementation of credit supervision and disciplinary measures for pharmaceutical enterprises, the social supervision over illegal purchase and sales of pharmaceutical enterprises has been further strengthened, and at the same time, warning efforts have been strengthened to guide more enterprises to regulate their own behavior, further protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the insured.
The medical price and bidding and procurement credit evaluation system is also an important magic weapon to carry out medical anti-corruption at present. Among the dishonest behaviors of pharmaceutical enterprises, a considerable part of them are suspected of medical corruption. The warning, information disclosure, market restrictions and other dishonest punishment measures in the medical price and bidding and procurement credit evaluation system, together with other means, constitute the "combination fist" of the medical anti-corruption system, which can move forward the supervision tentacles, so that the system can give better play to "saving people" while "curing diseases" Role of.
It is worth noting that sorting out the results of multi period dishonesty assessment released by the Health Insurance Bureau found that there were some "nail households" on the list of "serious dishonesty" and "dishonesty" pharmaceutical enterprises, which prompted relevant enterprises to take timely measures to repair their credit. Long term "dominating the list" would not only lose face, but also cause more "pain" due to the escalating market restrictions. Guiding relevant pharmaceutical enterprises to strive for market space and position through cost reduction and efficiency increase, R&D and innovation, and walking out of a virtuous circle of speaking by strength is undoubtedly the long-term way to get rid of such chronic diseases as "kickbacks" in the field of pharmaceutical purchase and marketing.
In recent years, all departments have made concerted efforts to keep the people's "medical money" and "life-saving money", from centralized purchase of drugs with quantity, "two ticket system", "double channel" and other medical reform measures, to cracking down on various types of insurance fraud, cutting off the drug return chain of medical insurance, and to announcing dishonest pharmaceutical enterprises. Further enriching regulatory means, combating all forms of medical insurance borers, and preventing those with ulterior motives from offsetting the reform results are the common vision of relevant institutional initiatives, and also the direction of future reform in the pharmaceutical field. It is expected that relevant parties will continue to enrich the "toolbox" of reform and governance in the medical field with more active exploration and hard core measures, create a clearer medical environment, and comprehensively protect the health and well-being of the people.
