Regional health inequalities of anticancer drug accessibility under the National Drug Price Negotiation in China: a decomposition analysis
Bingbing Tuo, Junnan Jiang, Haokai Zhao, Yiqing Mao, Yufei Ren · 2026
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Description
Bingbing Tuo and co-authors measured how evenly China's price negotiated cancer drugs are spread across its 31 provinces. Since 2016, national negotiations have cut prices and expanded insurance coverage of anticancer medicines, but availability can still depend on local wealth. Their 2026 study collected province level data on which hospitals and pharmacies stock the negotiated drugs. It computed gap indices tied to provincial income and broke those indices down to find what drives them.
Both indices showed pro rich gaps: hospitals scored 0.125 and pharmacies 0.139 on the concentration measure used. Medical insurance spending and inpatient costs together explained much of the hospital side gap, while pharmacist numbers drove the pharmacy side gap. Even within one disease the pattern held, with two breast cancer drugs showing higher gap scores of 0.244 and 0.223. The authors urge targeted supply measures for poorer, remote areas.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Bingbing Tuo, Junnan Jiang, Haokai Zhao, Yiqing Mao, Yufei Ren |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 36 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |