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Beijing, March 9 (reporter Li muyuan) “As far as I know, now 40% of the expenses of the traditional Chinese medicine industry are used for sales. This expense is not used for R & D, improvement of production facilities, improvement of production equipment, or improvement of product quality. Such a large proportion of marketing expenses raise the cost of the pharmaceutical industry, increase the burden of medical insurance, and promote the phenomenon of emphasizing marketing, neglecting scientific and technological innovation and neglecting management.” During the two sessions of the National People’s Congress, Lu Qingguo, deputy to the National People’s Congress and chairman of Chenguang biology, said in an interview with reporters that it is easy to reduce sales costs through centralized procurement. He suggested expanding the scope of centralized procurement of Chinese patent medicines and promoting the high-quality development of Chinese patent medicines.

During the two sessions of the National People’s Congress, Lu Qingguo, deputy to the National People’s Congress and chairman of Chenguang biology

It is reported that in December 2021, Hubei Province led 19 provinces and regions to form an alliance for centralized purchase of Chinese patent medicines, with an average price reduction of 42.27%. This is the first centralized procurement of Chinese patent medicine alliance in China. According to the annual demand of 19 provinces, it is expected to save more than 2.6 billion yuan per year. Lu Qingguo said that in the past, due to the needs of survival and development, Chinese patent medicine enterprises made great efforts in drug sales – huge sales teams generated high sales costs, and some even relied on commission rebates for promotion, which corrupted the social atmosphere and increased the medical burden. At the same time, the elements of high-quality development of enterprises – scientific and technological innovation and enterprise management improvement have been ignored. It is believed that as long as sales are done well, one handsome can cover up a hundred ugly. This will pose a great threat to the healthy and sustainable development of the Chinese patent medicine industry. “Because under the wrong price formation mechanism and sales mechanism, it is difficult for enterprises that really pay attention to product quality and curative effect to stand out quickly. All kinds of enterprises either actively or passively form path dependence on non-standard behavior, which has become a persistent disease of the industry.”

“In recent years, the state has reduced the marketing cost of enterprises through centralized procurement, which is conducive to squeezing out the unreasonable water in the drug circulation link and purifying the market environment.” Lu Qingguo said that centralized volume procurement is to clarify the procurement volume in advance through the method of “integration of bidding and procurement”, so as to ensure that the successful enterprises can achieve sales without excessive marketing, get rid of the obstacles of unreasonable sales mechanism to the benign development of the industry, and guide enterprises to focus on the quality and curative effect of drugs. With the deepening of centralized procurement, it is conducive to promote the industry to improve the concentration in the competition, promote industrial innovation and upgrading, and have a far-reaching impact on the standardized development and high-quality development of the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

However, Lu Qingguo said that at present, the centralized purchase of Chinese patent medicine has just been launched in some provinces and cities, covering not enough provinces and relatively few drug varieties. The shortlisted rules for bidding enterprises in the pilot provinces of centralized purchase of Chinese patent medicine are different, but they all have too high scores for the past performance of enterprises in the technical evaluation link, resulting in insufficient price competition in the bidding process and insufficient effect of centralized purchase with volume, Moreover, it did not put more truly competitive high-quality enterprises at the same level of competition, which affected the overall effect of centralized procurement and the goal of medical insurance cost control.

To this end, Lu Qingguo suggested that we should expand the variety range of centralized collection of Chinese patent medicines, accelerate the process of centralized collection of Chinese patent medicines everywhere, maximize the centralized collection of Chinese patent medicines as soon as possible, promote the high-quality, healthy and sustainable development of the traditional Chinese medicine industry, and truly make traditional Chinese medicine benefit the Chinese nation; Further optimize the rules for centralized procurement of Chinese patent medicines and the detailed rules for technical evaluation and price competition scoring, reduce the weight of technical evaluation, fully reflect the price advantage on the premise of ensuring the quality of drugs, and achieve the effect of reducing medical insurance expenses and realizing scientific and fair competition.
Lu Qingguo also called for the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine formula granules into the scope of centralized collection, so as to better promote the development of traditional Chinese medicine formula granules industry.