Healthy antidote

The national basic medicine system that was initiated on Tuesday is a big step forward in cutting healthcare inflation and making medical bills affordable for all. The first essential medicine list published along with the system can be considered as one way of ending hospitals' reliance on sale of medicines for profit.

Prohibitive medical bills in recent years point to an unreasonable medicine supply system, which allowed hospitals to rely on medicine sales for profit: The more medicines, expensive medicines in particular, they sell, the more profits they will make. There were scandals that some doctors received kickbacks from medicine producers for prescribing their drugs.

Besides soaring medical bills, such practices posed a serious threat to the long-term health of many patients. Some doctors abused their authority to prescribe the most expensive drugs rather than the right ones for patients in order to get kickbacks. Over-medication and overuse of antibiotics turned out to be common problems.