557 drugs clear initial review for insurance list

The National Healthcare Security Administration said on Monday that 557 drugs have passed the preliminary review for inclusion in the national basic medical insurance drug list, while another 54 have been provisionally approved for the commercial health insurance drug catalog.

The administration received 818 applications this year covering 674 generic drug names, an increase of 100 applications and 41 generic drug names from the previous year.

The overall pass rate for the preliminary review reached 92 percent this year, up 8 percentage points year-on-year, according to the administration.

"The majority of the declared varieties are newly developed drugs. A total of 343 drugs approved within the past five years are new medications," it said.

"This reflects the robust development of China's pharmaceutical industry, with the number of new drug approvals continuing to rise and pharmaceutical enterprises actively engaging in the catalog adjustment process," it added.

The administration said the higher pass rate indicates that drugmakers have gained a better understanding of the catalog adjustment rules and are submitting applications in a more rational manner.

China updates its basic medical insurance drug list annually to expand coverage of essential medicines, including treatments for cancer, chronic diseases, rare diseases and pediatric conditions. In 2025, the country introduced the inaugural commercial health insurance drug catalog, aimed at covering innovative, high-cost therapies.

Passing the preliminary review is only one of the initial steps toward inclusion in the insurance list. The process is followed by expert evaluations and drug price negotiations, with the final list of newly added drugs typically released toward the end of the year.

Huang Xinyu, head of the administration's department of medical services management, had said in a previous interview that one change to this year's adjustment rules allowed drugs included in last year's commercial health insurance catalog to apply for inclusion in the basic medical insurance drug list.

He said innovative drugs with significant clinical value are encouraged to apply for inclusion in the commercial catalog during the early stage of their market launch.

Wider clinical use will facilitate the accumulation of real-world clinical outcome data, while scaled-up production is likely to reduce manufacturing costs, paving the way for their eventual inclusion in the basic medical insurance drug list.