China adds 119 drugs to medicare reimbursement list

China has included 119 more kinds of drugs in its national medical insurance reimbursement list, delivering greater price cuts and benefiting more people, the National Health care Security Administration (NHSA) said at a press conference Monday.

Ninety-six of the new additions to the list are exclusive drugs that offer lower prices through negotiation and 16 were newly put on the market this year, the NHSA said.

Altogether, a record number of 162 drugs on the list were negotiated for price reduction. A deal was reached for 119 of the drugs, with their prices dropping an average of 50.64 percent.

The inclusions also helped expand the scope of reimbursement to cover more diseases including COVID-19. So far, all the medicines listed in China's latest diagnosis and treatment scheme for COVID-19 have been added to the reimbursement list, the NHSA said.

China currently has 2,800 kinds of medicines on the medicare reimbursement list, including 1,374 traditional Chinese patent medicines.