The Taiwan Medical Association on Monday urged the Ministry of Health and Welfare not to suspend the National Health Insurance Administration’s (NHIA) drug expenditure target, but instead increase the National Health Insurance (NHI) budget and review spending on medicine to resolve a drug shortage.
The ministry on Monday announced that it would seek to address a shortage of dozens of drugs in the nation by guaranteeing that the prices of drugs in short supply would not be adjusted in the next drug expenditure target, to be implemented on April 1.
The mechanism sets a target value for the NHIA’s annual drug expenditure. If the spending exceeds the target value, the drug price would be adjusted in the next year using a formula to determine reasonable prices based on the NHIA’s reimbursement prices and market prices.
Photo: CNA
The ministry said it might re-evaluate the drug expenditure target mechanism as a long-term solution.
Abolishing that mechanism might harm the nation’s healthcare system, the Taiwan Medical Association said.
Taiwan’s healthcare system is well-known for providing high-quality healthcare “relatively cheap,” but the nation’s health expenditure — the share of health spending as GDP — is relatively low compared with many other advanced economies, it said.
The NHIA has been working hard to keep drug price adjustments stable and predictable under the drug expenditure target mechanism, but the COVID-19 pandemic, global economic issues and long holidays might still have contributed to temporary drug shortages, it said.
Abolishing the mechanism would cause drug prices to rise to unreasonable levels, and could affect the budget for other medical expenses, which would harm the nation’s overall healthcare system, the association said.
For the healthcare system to continue advancing, the long-term solution should be to reasonably increase the total NHI budget, but in the short term, the NHIA should discuss the mechanism and drug spending with the medical community before adjusting prices, it said.
The prices of many drugs of the same form, dosage and ingredients for treating the “three highs” — high blood pressure, blood lipids and blood sugar — have been cut to almost the lowest possible price, and if they are cut further, drug manufacturers might withdraw their products from the Taiwan market, it said.
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