Background: The Chinese government removed the price ceiling of most drugs in June 2015 to establish a market-driven pricing system. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the elimination of drug ceiling price (EDCP) policy on drug prices.
Methods: Using a national macro-level dataset, we employed an interrupted time series method to study the abrupt level and gradual trend changes of Chinese and Western medicine consumer price index (CPI) between June 2014 and June 2017.
Results: The policy exerted level change on Chinese medicine CPI, increasing 0.201% (95% CI 0.026% to 0.376%, p = 0.026). And the trend in Chinese medicine CPI was still decreased nonsignificantly after the EDCP policy. However, there was no significant price change in Western medicine.
Conclusion: The EDCP policy has different effects on the prices of Chinese and Western medicines. Therefore, we need to pay more attention to the drug pricing mechanism in the future.
Keywords: ceiling price; drug price; interrupted time series; price index.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.