Economics
China’s Health-Care Push May Curb Growth for Pfizer, Merck
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China’s efforts to make medicines cheaper for 700 million rural people have dragged its biggest health-care stocks down 26 percent this year. Plans to expand the program to wealthy cities may also hurt Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co.
A new way to buy essential drugs being tested in Anhui province caused prices to fall by as much as 90 percent. The system, which encourages drugmakers to compete on price and quality for state contracts, may go national and be widened to include other medicines, according to lobbyists representing 38 foreign drugmakers in China.