Further healthcare reform

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang's visit to AIDS patients on Friday ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec 1 again shows the importance the government attaches to healthcare. With his long speech on healthcare reform published last week, Li has definitely tried to drive home a clear message that the Chinese government is resolved to realize a breakthrough in healthcare reform for the benefit of the country's 1.3 billion people.

This is no easy task and there will be knotty problems that must be unravelled to successfully reform the country's healthcare system.

One of such problems is that there is a large discrepancy between the cost of producing a drug and the price hospitals charge patients. Many people have also pointed their fingers at the large number of parasites, the drug representatives, who maneuver for the profits that are distributed among doctors, hospitals and themselves.

Investigations show that the retail price of an ordinary antibiotic injection can be 60 times its production cost, and for some drugs the markup can be even higher.

A recent CCTV survey found that for the pharmaceutical product clindamycin the gross margin was as high as 2,000 percent in some locations.