China Cuts Medicine PriceChina is making greater effort to further cut medicine prices to benefit people's health and their pockets.The government encourages competition among medicine manufacturers to make price lower, today's "China Daily" quoted a spokesman for the State Development Planning Commission as saying Monday. Hospitals and drug stores are expected to benefit from such competition, and customers will be able to buy medicine from hospitals or drug stores at reasonable prices, it said. According to current practice, most Chinese medicine manufacturers sell their products at unreasonably high prices directly to hospitals. The result is that patients always complain about high prices, the paper said. People have been encouraged to buy medicines in drug stores, which have become more and more popular in China, said the spokesman. However, more than 80 percent of medicines are still sold in hospitals, and it is still difficult to make hospitals lower prices. All manufacturers with poor-quality technology and products will be forced to close down, said the paper. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/english/ |