On March 5, the Chinese government published the "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Medical Security System" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. This highest-level document has carefully deployed relevant work in the field of medical security system reform in the next five to ten years, especially related to the medical security benefit list system, the dynamic adjustment mechanism of the medical insurance catalog, the reform of medical insurance payment methods, medicines and medical consumables. The clarification of a number of key issues such as the reform of the centralized procurement system deserves the attention of medical professionals.
      Provincial-level supplementary medical insurance catalogues should be completely removed from the market, the medical insurance benefits list system should be established and improved, and the dynamic adjustment mechanism of medical insurance catalogues should be further improved.
      The era of the one-vote system may really be coming. In 2019, the National Medical Reform Leading Group issued a document encouraging medical insurance agencies to directly settle payments with production or circulation companies. This is clearly reflected in the documents issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, which undoubtedly added strength to this sentence. The next thing that companies need to think about is that in the process from the "two-invoice system" to the "one-invoice system", the medical insurance fund and pharmaceutical companies are directly settled, which essentially bypasses medical institutions. Then, the previous series of processes may be all need to change accordingly.
      The time point for volume procurement has been clarified. From the perspective of the close connection between drug procurement and medical insurance payment, 2025 is likely to be the mature time point for the completion of the first phase of drug bidding and procurement.
      Procurement with volume as the main body at the prefecture level will kick off. Municipal and prefectural-level overall planning and provincial-level overall planning will affect mass purchases, in accordance with the standards of unified system and policy, unified fund revenue and expenditure, and management service integration, comprehensively implement basic medical insurance city and prefecture-level overall planning. Explore to promote the vertical management of medical security departments below the municipal prefecture level, and encourage qualified provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) to promote provincial-level overall planning in accordance with the ideas of hierarchical management, shared responsibility, overall adjustment, and budget assessment. A new round of drug procurement with prefecture-level cities as the main body will undoubtedly kick off first, and mass procurement of medical equipment will follow.