NRDL+ 2025 Annual Executive Debrief: The State of Access for Innovative Medicines in China
For the past few months, we’ve been shining a light on China’s C-List and Commercial Catalog developments—not just because they are important initiatives on their own, but because they mark the beginning of a much deeper transformation that will reshape how companies approach China’s market, from clinical development to commercialization.
There are three strategic reasons why the C-List and Commercial Catalog matter:
- A fundamental shift in pricing philosophy: Moving away from volume-price tradeoffs rooted in the generics era toward a value-based pricing framework that better aligns with China’s biopharma innovation ecosystem.
- Deeper integration across insurance, medicine, and care delivery: The successful implementation of these initiatives will require coordinated policies across BMI, commercial insurance, distribution, digital infrastructure, and new collaboration models—transforming the entire access environment for innovative medicines.
- China’s experience will serve as an important reference for other emerging markets.
This year's Executive Briefing—Module One of our C-List and Commercial Catalog Executive Series—lays the critical groundwork to help you navigate this shift.
It provides a comprehensive yet focused update on the most critical structural and policy developments across basic medical insurance, commercial health insurance, and the provider sector since last April—offering essential context on how insurance, medicine, and care delivery are converging, and how the C-List and Commercial Catalog initiatives fit within this evolving landscape.
Section 1: Ecosystem: Three Key Trends from China's Basic Medical Insurance Data
Section 2: Basic Medical Insurance: Raising the Bar for Innovation
Section 3: Commercial Health Insurance: Growing Momentum to Align with BMI and Fund Innovative Medicines
Section 4: Provider: Developing Companion Policies to Support Medical Innovation
