Research On The Path And Method Of Realizing The Pricing Of Chinese Medicines

Price is the representation of the value of commodity nominated in currency, which is the exchange rate between money and commodities, indicating the exchanging relationship of people under the market condition and the resource allocation among economic entities under the market restrictions. Price has strong guiding functions for resource allocation, that is, whether it is high or low, rising or falling, price would directly affect the economic benefits of both manufactures and consumers, and furthermore, to affect their production or consumption behaviors.Pharmaceuticals is a globally accepted unique commodity, which greatly concerns people's health of a nation and has conspicuous economic and social effects. Drug prices relate dramatically to whether most people can satisfy their basic medical needs, whether pharmaceutical manufacturers positively incented to be productive, whether researching of new drugs can remain sustainable. Besides, it is a belt connecting pharmaceutical enterprises, hospitals, doctors, patients and other beneficiaries, as well as the balance of beneficiaries, immediate profits and long-term interests. We can easily tell from the realistic needs and the goals of drug pricing that the price of drug carries multiple anticipations. Multiple anticipations may result in controversial requests from different aspects. On one hand, consistent pricing will have to make sure that drugs are reachable for people, that is, objectively, drugs should be both achievable and affordable, which means not only the provision of drugs should be guaranteed, but also the affordability of drugs. The lower the price, the easier to achieve that goal. On the other hand, due to the changes of the spectrum of diseases and the resistance to drugs, it is required that new drugs should be consistently provided to meet the clinical needs. However, given the characteristics of “high inputs?high risks?high returns?long period" in research and development of new drugs, "high returns" is a must to sustain this activity, which requires a highly profitable drug pricing. Above all, these paradoxical anticipations for drug pricing demand decide the important and inevitability of drug price scientific and rational.Due to the particularity of the drug and the importance of reasonable prices, Governments around the world regulate drug price moderately and reasonably. But no matter what kind of regulatory methods they take, the purposes are going to serve drug management better to ensure drug usage safe, effective, economical, and appropriate. Drug price management is an important part of medicine management, and the drug pricing is the core content of drug price management.China's drug pricing method has always been the cost-plus based on the costs, that is, after considering the research and development costs, production costs, circulation costs, plus proportional profits. Nevertheless, price is the representation of the value of commodity nominated in currency, not the cost of commodity. The cost-plus method is simply reflect the manufacturing cost and sales, neither the value or curative effect, nor the goals of drug pricing that the price of drug carries multiple anticipations. So far, on one hand, as a result of the information asymmetry of drug manufacture cost, government regulate drug price by a lack of conceivable basis, in the case of the convergence of the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and medical institutions to promote the price of drugs, the fiscal burden would strengthen for both patients and medical insurance institutions; but on the other hand, some drugs with good curative effect pricing "unrealistically lower,” leading pharmaceutical enterprises' low production enthusiasm,jeopardizing the realization of goals for drug management.Drug prices in China are often unrealistically higher or lower than its real price in the market,which indicates that drug prices deviate from the real pharmaceutical value, furthermore, it reveals the fact that our existing bases and methods of drug pricing and price adjustment are not very reasonable nor scientific. Improvement ideas and adjustment of existing pricing methods should be"subordinate to and serve the pharmaceutical management objectives" as the guiding principle,"price is a reflection of the value" as a standard, comprehensive consideration of the function and cost.In this study, from point of view on pharmacoeconomics, value engineering and systems engineering theory, on the basis of the requirements for the management objectives of China's drug price guidelines, analysis of the current drug pricing method and problems, and based on this,suited to China's national conditions "bulk" drug pricing ideas and methods has been proposed.This paper, firstly, clarifies the objective of drug prices administration, and then measures the degree of achievement of the existing methods to the objective. And based on these, considering the objective conditions and practical needs as well as existing methods of the drug pricing in China, with the integration of ideas and methods from economics, pharmacoeconomics and value engineering, we promote a new way that the pricing and adjustment path based on drug value can realize by multiple proportions scoring functions between different drugs to provide reference for scientific and rational drug pricing and adjustment in China.