On Legal Issues Of Restraint On High Drug Prices In China

The drug is a special commodity which concerns people’health, high drug pricerefers to the highest retail price of drug prescribed by government or the retail priceof drug which is set by the drug enterprises is far higher than the average level ofsociety, which causes the price of drug is far higher than social average cost. Highdrug price in China mainly marked by far more higher price than same kind retail drugstore or same drug determined by large and medium-sized medical institutions whichhave monopolistic position in drug business. It not only violates the rights ofconsumers, but also violate the rights of health. After China’s marketization ofmedical institutions and government’ s releasing on the regulation of medicalinstitutions, the issue of high drug prices becomes more and more evident, and hasbecome a trend, then the government started to strengthen the regulation of drugprices. Although the deepened health system reform performed in2009explored drugprice from different perspectives and achieved some achievements, the problem ofhigh drug price did not solved effectively and radically. Its reason is various andcomplicated, the main reason is "double failure" of the market and the government,the lack of effective and comprehensive regulation and the firmness of enforcing law.Therefore, in order to fundamentally solve the issue of high drug price, we muststrengthen the construction of legal system, to solve the problem of market andgovernment failure. According to the real situation in recent market, after takingmeasures form the two aspects of market and government, some effective and specificways can be used to solve this problem, such as to borrow effective measures inregulation model from developed countries, to combine medical system reform withother correlated systems, to coordinate the production, circulation, and the salescircles effectively, to perfect public hospitals reform regulations, to perfect medicalservice prices system, new drug approval system, essential drug, system, centralizedbidding system and the system of separation between medical and medicine。Throughthe scientific legal system construction of drug price management, the problem ofhigh drug price can be solved thoroughly.