The government should take measures to support low-price pharmacies so that the poor also are able to buy medicines, says an article in Yanzhao Metropolis Daily. The following is an excerpt:

Beijing Baoxing Low-Price Pharmacy set the price for each packet of New Contec, a drug to cure flu, at 9.7 yuan after it opened six months ago. Because of its refusal to raise that drug's price as required by the manufacturer, the pharmacy has recently been faced with a supply crisis.

The manufacturer cut off supplies and said it was not its main aim. It was for maintaining the normal market price.

The founding of the low-price pharmacy was to ease the problems of the poor. The purpose of this type of pharmacy is its ability to provide medicines as cheap as possible to the sick as long as it is able to keep running.

Beijing Baoxing Low-Price Pharmacy was not after fat profits, only to provide a "fair price business".

It seems that the manufacturer has gone too far.

The reason for pressing the pharmacy to raise the price is because the manufacturer hoped to gain high profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

To put it in another way, the manufacturer knows he cannot compete with low-price competition.

(China Daily 10/16/2007 page9)