Gleevec Undergoes Second Price Cut Within Five Months Amid Policy Pressure

Gleevec Price Cut Twice in Five Months.

Gleevec Voluntarily Reduces Price, Effective April 1

March 26, Gansu Provincial Public Resource Trading BureauPharmaceuticalsThe Procurement Office Issued the "Notice on Adjusting the Online Listing Price of Imatinib Mesylate Tablets (Gleevec) (Batch 10)"

The notice indicates that, upon the voluntary application of Beijing Novartis Pharma Co., Ltd., the winning bid price for imatinib mesylate tablets (Gleevec), distributed by the company, on the Gansu Provincial Centralized Procurement Platform has been reduced from RMB 9,998 per box to RMB 7,182 per box. The adjusted price has been implemented across the province since April 1, 2019.

Gleevec underwent a price reduction during last year’s inter-provincial joint procurement of anticancer drugs. Due to its non-selection in the “4+7” centralized volume-based procurement, which mandated price cuts, current drug prices are now aligned across provinces through price linkage mechanisms.

14-Province Joint Procurement: Price Drops Below 10,000 for the First Time

On October 19, 2018, the drug procurement platforms of 14 provinces and regions—Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Hunan, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Shanxi, and Jilin—simultaneously released the “Public Notice on the Results of Joint Price Negotiations for Imported Anticancer Drugs by the Inter-Provincial Alliance.”

According to the public notice, the negotiated price for Gleevec (0.1g × 60 tablets) is RMB 9,998. This is lower than its previous prices in Liaoning (RMB 10,800), Guizhou (RMB 10,560), and Shanxi (RMB 10,500). It can be said that this price represents a new low across the 14 allied provinces, marking the first time it has fallen below RMB 10,000.

It is reported that when Gleevec first entered the Chinese market in 2002, the price for the specification of 0.1g*120 tablets was RMB 23,500.

4+7 Non-Selected, Price Reduced Again

On March 5, 2019, the Shanghai Sunshine Pharmaceutical Procurement Network issued the “Notice on Price Adjustments for Certain High-Priced Contract Drugs in This Municipality under the National Centralized Drug Procurement Program (No. 16 [2019])” (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”).

As can be seen from the attachment to the “Notice,” the price of Novartis’s originator drug imatinib mesylate (100 mg × 60 tablets) has dropped to RMB 7,182.

The recent voluntary price reduction in Gansu likely aligns with Shanghai’s pricing, making nationwide price harmonization a highly probable outcome.

Gleevec is not the only drug to have proactively reduced its price.

On March 4, the Zhejiang Provincial Drug and Medical Device Procurement Center issued a notice to lower the linked (procurement) price of Eli Lilly’s pemetrexed disodium for injection. In the national “4+7” volume-based procurement program, the winning bidder for pemetrexed disodium for injection was Sichuan Huiyu Pharmaceutical.

Policy Pressure: High-Priced Drugs to See Price Cuts

From a policy perspective, in addition to requiring that drugs not selected in the national centralized drug procurement reduce their prices in accordance with relevant regulations, the National Healthcare Security Administration has also officially issued a document to adjust the medical insurance payment standards for drugs not selected in the "4+7" pilot program.

For example, if the price of non-selected drugs at the end of 2018 was more than twice the selected price, the payment standard in 2019 would be reduced by no less than 30% from the original price, and adjusted to use the selected drug price as the payment standard in 2020 or 2021.

Encourage non-winning enterprises to proactively reduce prices, aligning with the payment standards. Each pilot city may also explore methods such as adjusting the individual co-payment ratio based on a comprehensive consideration of local conditions, thereby guiding patients to use the selected products.

Industry insiders have analyzed and pointed out that companies' proactive price reductions are likely influenced by policy pressure, referring to the requirement that even high-priced drugs not selected in centralized procurement must also reduce their prices.

Source: Saibailan Author: Yumi