3 more Beijing hospitals to cut medicine prices

Beijing has asked three more hospitals to remove their medicine markups, as the city continues its medical health reform that it began early this year.

Tiantan Hospital, Jishuitan Hospital and Tongren Hospital will sell their medicines without markups effective Dec 1.

Friendship Hospital and Chaoyang Hospital reduced their prices earlier this year.

Since the 1980s, Chinese hospitals has been selling medicines with a 15 percent markup of pharmaceutical companies' prices, a practice long believed by many to be a reason that doctors prescribe so much medicine.

Beijing is gradually removing medicine markups in hospitals, but will allow hospitals to charge patients higher medical care fees instead.

Han Xiaofang, head of the capital's medical reform office, said the office has punished doctors at the Friendship and Chaoyang hospitals who prescribe excessively expensive medicine.