对药品市场降价政策的评估——来自中国1997～2008年的证据

Evaluating the Effects of China's Price Regulation on Pharmaceutical Market During 1997～2008

运用我国宏观数据考察历次药品降价政策的效果,我们发现:降价政策只能短期小幅降低药品价格,但增加降价干预强度可以加强这种短期影响;降价政策没有减轻居民医疗负担和降低制药企业平均盈利状况,但却加剧了亏损企业的数量和亏损额;降价政策刺激了药品尤其是高价药品的进口,但并未影响与药品存在替代或互补关系的其他医疗产品或服务的价格。整体而言,政府直接的降价干预并没有实现其政策初衷,却带来了新的行为扭曲。

This paper evaluates the effects of China＇s pharmaceutical price regulations using a macro data during 1997-2008. It is found that these regulations reduce the medicine price indices significantly in the short-run only. However, they fail to reduce households＇ health-care expenditure and the average profitability of pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, these price regulations induce more imports of expensive medicines, with no significant effects on the prices of substitute or complementary goods or service. To summarize, the pharmaceutical price regulations fail to reduce the medicine prices and alleviate the consumers＇ health-care burden. On the contrary, it induces certain distortionary effects.