Prices of over two thousand kinds of drugs of which patents already expired will be reduced substantially next year
E021121Y1 Dec. 2002（E40）
The Executive Yuan agreed the proposal raised by the Department of Health on Nov 20 and it decided to follow suit the mechanism established by advanced Euramerican countries for immediately reducing the prices of drugs of which patents already expired. That is, for drugs which were granted patents prior to 1981, the prices to be reimbursed by the National Health Insurance will be substantially reduced since 2003. This move is mainly for the purse of resolving the serious problem about the black hole of drug prices reimbursed by the National Health Insurance.
The alleged “black hole of drug prices” refers to the waste of resources of National Health Insurance caused by the unreasonable system of drug prices, as described by outsiders. The fact that the prices of patented drugs of which patents already expired are not reduced is the major reason for the existence of unreasonable differences in drug prices in our system of the National Health Insurance.
