Shanghai to improve access to innovative medical treatments

Seven Shanghai government departments, including the Shanghai Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau and the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, on Monday jointly released a document that may allow consumers to choose from a wider variety of insurance options to pay for medical treatments in the future.

Officials said one of the main objectives of this new policy is to bolster the development of innovative medical devices in the city's biomedicine sector.

Xia Kejia, director of the Shanghai Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau, noted that this policy will also provide consumers with improved access to innovative medical devices.

The document states that authorities will support collaborations between commercial insurance companies, medical institutions, and pharmaceutical enterprises and increase the number of commercial health insurance products that will cover new drugs, good drugs, and high-quality medical services, as well as medical expenses that are yet to be included in basic medical insurance coverage. Authorities will also work to ensure that more innovative drugs and equipment that are in urgent need are covered by commercial health insurance.

Liu Ping, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said this policy will allow more people to access expensive treatments like the CAR-T cell therapies that were developed in Shanghai. The price of these therapies is over 1.2 million yuan ($168,000).

He noted that although there are 13,000 new cases that could benefit from these therapies in the country each year, only around 500 patients have access to them because of the prohibitive pricing.

"We believe that with the unveiling of the multi-party payment mechanism, biopharmaceutical enterprises will be more motivated to make breakthroughs in making innovations, and the public will have a better payment ability to access innovative therapies," he said.

In 2022, the scale of the city's biopharmaceutical industry was 853.6 billion yuan. The scale is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2025, according to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.

Since 2019, 19 innovative drugs by biopharmaceutical companies based in Shanghai - about one-fourth of the national total - have been approved. Meanwhile, 26 innovative medical devices, including a proton therapy system and an innovative PET-CT facility, from the city have been approved.