6+1 New Legal Measures Making Healthcare Affordable [Part I]

6+1 new legal measures making healthcare affordable [Part I]

Vincent Zhu, Senior partner

Wing Wei, Attorney

The affordability of healthcare and medicines has always affected our lives in some capacity. In recent years, China has issued a series of provisions in order to regulate illicit activities within the pharmaceutical industry.

This is the first part of an article that explains the legal measures taken by healthcare authorities in Shanghai. These measures are especially relevant for industrial producers and companies operating in the healthcare and pharma industry.

In 2013, The National Health and Family Planning Commission issued the “Provisions on the Establishment of Adverse Records of Commercial Briberies in the Medicine Purchase and Sales Industry”, and further pushed to implement the “Dual Invoices System”, the “Medical Representative Registration System”, and the “Main Responsibility to the Pharmaceutical holder” in 2017, so as to eradicate the thorny issue of using pharmacy profits to subsidize medical services through institutional arrangements.

Since August and September 2017, the city of Shanghai has continuously published anti-corruption measures in order to deal with commercial bribery in the pharmaceutical industry and let drug prices return to normal. The measures are called “6+1 corruption measures” (“6+1” 部反腐文件).

What exactly are these 6+1 anti-corruption measures?

The following table introduces the content of key points of the 6+1 measures:

To be continued…

Pay attention to our next article, Wednesday, 27th December.