China Establishes Market-Price Database, Reshaping Global Pricing Signals
On December 7, China released the results of its inaugural Commercial Insurance Innovative Drug Catalog (C-List), which includes 19 medicines. The catalog spans not only oncology therapies—such as CAR-T treatments—but also drugs for rare diseases, including neuroblastoma and Gaucher disease, as well as Alzheimer’s disease therapies that have drawn significant public attention.
Both the scale and composition of the final catalog closely align with the analysis we have shared through the NRDL+ newsletter and the C-List Masterclass. In the Masterclass, we emphasized that the initial scope of the C-List would likely remain limited, reflecting China’s current commercial insurance funding capacity for innovative medicines.
From a product-selection perspective, we also highlighted the price–value adjustment framework proposed by former National Healthcare Security Administration insurance-funding experts, and in particular the quadrant the C-List is designed to target: therapies addressing high unmet clinical need and lacking viable in-catalog alternatives. This framework reflects the NHSA’s underlying policy logic.
Layered onto this is the commercial payer lens. As discussed in our recent session, insurers’ decisions are ultimately driven by three core dimensions of commercial viability: actuarial risk and budget impact, market appeal, and policy alignment.
Drugs that sit at the intersection of these two perspectives—aligning with NHSA priority areas while also presenting a compelling, evidence-based value proposition to insurers—are the most likely candidates for C-List inclusion.
This analytical framework is borne out by both the final C-List results and recent public remarks by Huang Xinyu (黄心宇), Director-General of the NHSA Department of Medical Services Management. He noted that drugs included in the commercial insurance innovative drug catalog typically share four characteristics: a high degree of innovation, significant clinical value, lack of substitutability within the NRDL, and suitability for commercial insurance use (“适保性”).
This is precisely where NRDL+ is designed to add value—helping companies anticipate and prepare for critical policy direction in China, rather than reacting after outcomes are finalized.
Finally, as China’s C-List currently functions as a reference catalog, translating it into a robust execution framework will depend on whether commercial insurance can become a durable second pillar for innovative drug access in China.
We will continue to monitor these developments closely through Access360, bringing timely updates and on-the-ground intelligence from leading China policy and payer experts.
Now, let’s get back to today’s topic.
On December 2, the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) issued the Announcement on Launching the Drug Price Registration and Inquiry Service. On the same day, China officially released its national Drug Price Registration System (DPRS). The DPRS represents a further refinement of NHSA’s drug-price governance framework and is intended to serve as an authoritative, standardized platform for registering and querying drug prices, with relevance for both domestic and global markets.
