The National Medical Insurance Administration recently held another meeting with Shanghai Shangyao First Biochemical Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shangyao First Biochemical") to urge it to further correct unreasonable high prices, eliminate the space for inflated drug prices, and eliminate adverse effects. This is not the only company being interviewed. Since the beginning of 2023, the National Medical Insurance Administration has interviewed a total of 23 companies throughout the year, covering 30 varieties, in response to issues such as monopolistic sales control of some drugs, inflated costs, and forced price increases due to shortages. The average price reduction of the interviewed drugs exceeded 40%. On January 18th, the Economic Reference News reported that "using shortages to drive up prices" refers to a small number of pharmaceutical companies creating the illusion of "shortage of drugs" to force drug prices to rise and make huge profits. Taking the sulfated polymyxin B produced by Shanghai Pharmaceutical First Biochemical Co., Ltd. as an example, its online price once reached as high as 2303 yuan/tube to 2918 yuan/tube. After being first interviewed by the National Medical Insurance Administration in June last year, the company promised to lower the price to 270 yuan per unit; After a recent meeting, the price has dropped to 123 yuan per unit. The high original price of this drug is due to the pharmaceutical company's use of the scarcity of exclusive antibiotic varieties, inflating costs and forcing prices to rise. The concept and phenomenon of pharmaceutical companies using shortages to drive growth is not new. In 2019, the National Health Commission and the National Medical Insurance Administration publicly exposed that some pharmaceutical factories were forced to increase prices due to shortages, and stated that they would improve the monitoring and early warning mechanism for drug shortages. Last year, 23 pharmaceutical companies were interviewed due to reasons such as forcing prices to rise due to shortages, resulting in a significant reduction in the prices of related drugs. This indicates that in addition to negotiations on medical insurance drugs and centralized procurement of drugs, measures such as interviews and penalties can also be taken against pharmaceutical companies that use shortages to drive up prices, which can serve as a "price cutting tool" to address the issue of inflated drug prices. The reason why a few pharmaceutical companies use shortages to drive prices up is because they are good at using scarce drugs to make big decisions. On the one hand, pharmaceutical companies suggest that raising drug prices is reasonable under the pretext of "rarity is precious"; On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies inflate costs and falsely mark drug prices through monopolistic positions, joint cheating, and other means. In fact, some shortage drugs are not really in short supply. Not only is there sufficient supply of raw materials for drugs, but there is also no problem with production capacity. Therefore, some drug shortages are artificially created illusions, which are excuses found by relevant pharmaceutical companies to "force inflation with shortages.". Due to the unique nature of drugs, it is often difficult for the general public to compare prices for scarce drugs, and they do not understand the internal situation of drug raw material supply and demand, production costs, etc. As a result, they bear more medication costs invisibly. At the same time, once drugs that are driven up by shortages enter the medical insurance catalog, it also increases the expenditure of the medical insurance fund. That is to say, a small number of pharmaceutical companies are using shortages to drive up prices, which not only empties the public's money for buying medicine, but also suspects them of profiting improperly from medical insurance funds. It is necessary for the National Medical Insurance Administration and market supervision departments to hold talks and impose penalties on pharmaceutical companies that are forced to rise due to shortages. Although "using shortages to drive up prices" is a "black screen operation" of pharmaceutical companies, it is still discovered by relevant departments. This not only indicates that "using shortages to drive up prices" will eventually reveal its "fox tail", but also indicates that the regulatory supervision of relevant departments in this regard is effective. As long as we strengthen the regular supervision of drug prices, especially shortage drug prices and raw materials, we will discover problems such as drug companies monopolizing sales control, inflating costs, and using shortages to drive up prices. Medical insurance department