No tariffs on targeted cancer drugs will reduce the price pain for patients

PREMIER LI KEQIANG promises zero tariff rates for targeted cancer drugs at a news conference after the two sessions in Beijing on Tuesday. Thepaper.cn comments:

It is estimated more than 2 million people die of cancer in China each year. If there are zero tariffs, the retail price of the imported lifesaving drugs used in targeted cancer therapies will drop markedly. Their high prices have resulted in a large number of cancer patients exhausting their savings to extend their lives for a short time.

Some imported targeted cancer therapies can cost a patient as much as 10,000 yuan ($1,579) a dose as they are not covered by the medical insurance system. The high prices mean many patients have to give up their treatment.

More and more patients have turned to buying medicines from India through various channels as the prices are much lower, or to generic drugs that are lower in both price and efficiency. They then take the medicines at home without professional instruction and monitoring, further risking their health.

Aside from the tariffs, the high retail price of imported drugs in China is also pushed up by agents’ fees, value-added tax, and high basic prices, which stem from the super-national treatment that some foreign medicines have been enjoying in the drug procurement of public hospitals, even if some of their patent protections have expired.

The pledge to end the tariffs on targeted cancer therapies indicates that the government recognizes they are special goods concerning people’s welfare. But even without the tariffs, there still remains considerable room to squeeze the profit links between customs and patients to further bring down the prices of the drugs.

That the government has to open doors to imported drugs to save people’s lives should also ring alarm bells for domestic pharmaceutical companies, especially the State-owned ones, as they have no reasons to sit idle, and are obliged to strengthen their research into these badly needed medicines and try their best to acquire the ability of producing them as early as possible.

Uber has announced it is suspending its tests of unmanned vehicles in the United States and Canada. It has even been suggested the accident might have cast a negative effect upon the unmanned vehicle test plans globally.

Some also argue that the vehicle involved in the accident had a human driver, who would take action in emergencies in order to prevent accidents. However, the victim who was pushing a bicycle emerged onto the road out of the dark, and the human driver sitting behind the wheel did not react in time.

Therefore, it might not be the fault of the unmanned driving system alone. Besides, it is too early to conclude that unmanned vehicles are “inherently unsafe” before the investigation reaches its conclusions.

For long, the public has been worrying about the possibility of unmanned driving vehicles getting out of control. They worry that the smart systems controlling the vehicles might fail to react in emergencies, and cause accidents.

Do not forget similar worries had been expressed about 150 years ago when vehicles were first introduced onto the road. People had no less fear of vehicles in the 1800s than they have today of their autonomous incarnations.

The fact is that road order is maintained by traffic lights and the police. However, accidents can never be totally eliminated.

Self-driving cars actually have an advantage over human beings as they never “intentionally” break the rules. Their biggest risk lies in being hacked and remotely controlled, which was not the case in Arizona.

It can be expected that US authorities will implement stricter controls over unmanned vehicles in the near future. However, unmanned vehicles will become common on the roads in the long run.