IP absent from latest list of China healthcare reforms

China State Council's newly released task list for medical and healthcare system reform makes no mention of IP policies, which could suggest that patent reforms might be on hold. Previous versions of the State Council document included IP reform ideas, such as patent linkage and patent extension.

The list, released in Circular 83 on Aug. 28, outlines 50 tasks the State Council hopes to implement this year. These include improving medical insurance payment and reimbursement as well as formulating guidelines to improve the national essential medicine system. The guidelines also ask that all provinces directly under central government cooperate with the country's cancer drug tax reduction policy, promote centralized procurement of cancer drugs in their respective insurance catalogs and expedite listing and approval of new drugs. ...