Li Tao, deputy director of the National Medical Insurance Administration, made it clear at the press conference of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council that after the conditional listing, free vaccination of the new crown vaccine will be provided on the premise that residents are informed and voluntary, and the company will provide the cost of the vaccine at an agreed price; plus vaccination services

All costs will be borne by the medical insurance fund and the government, and will not be borne by individual residents.

It is worth noting that the medical insurance fund uses the rolling balance of the medical insurance fund, which will not affect the current income and expenditure of the medical insurance fund, nor will it affect the treatment benefits of insured persons.

Previously, people in China reported that they were charged fees during the emergency vaccination process. Zeng Yixin said that he had issued a document in the name of the comprehensive team of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, demanding immediate rectification.

Domestic vaccines can be divided into Class I vaccines and Class II vaccines according to different payers.

Category I vaccines are the National Immunization Program vaccines, which are provided free of charge to citizens by the government, including hepatitis B vaccine, BCG vaccine, etc. for infants and young children; Category II vaccines refer to other vaccines that are voluntarily vaccinated by residents, such as influenza vaccines.

The National Immunization Program holds at least one meeting every year to discuss whether to update Category I vaccines, and the adjustment and optimization of the original vaccine use procedures.

However, the final decision needs to consider adjusting the plan based on comprehensive aspects such as public health needs, finance, public health implementation capabilities, and vaccine accessibility.

In the past, expenditures on Class I vaccines did not involve medical insurance funds, but were directly funded by the government.

There have been discussions between NPC deputies and the government on whether the COVID-19 vaccine should be paid for by the medical insurance fund.

Some congress representatives suggested that COVID-19 vaccination be included in medical insurance for full reimbursement. However, in October 2020, the National Medical Insurance Administration responded that “the current basic medical insurance system is still based on providing basic disease treatment protection for the masses and strives to meet the basic medical needs of the masses.”

, There is no ability to expand the scope of payment to non-therapeutic projects such as vaccines. "However, another problem is that if the new crown vaccine is completely financed, it may cause greater financial pressure.

According to the previous "Anhui Province Emergency Purchase Negotiation Announcement of Novel Coronavirus Vaccine for Emergency Use", the purchase price of Anhui Province's new coronavirus inactivated vaccines from Beijing Sinovac Zhongwei, Beijing Institute of Biological Products, and Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is 200 yuan.

/ bottle or branch.

Calculated based on the domestic population of 1.39 billion, if future vaccine purchase price reductions are not taken into account, the cost of purchasing the new crown vaccine alone will exceed 550 billion yuan.

This does not take into account the cost of shipping the vaccine and the labor costs incurred when administering the vaccine.

However, according to the "Statistical Bulletin on the Development of my country's Health Careers in 2019" issued by the National Health Commission, the total health expenditure in 2019 exceeded 6.5 trillion, of which government health expenditure was approximately 1.74 trillion.

If all COVID-19 vaccine spending is channeled through government health spending, it may squeeze other parts of health spending.

The rolling balance of the medical insurance fund mentioned by Li Tao at the joint prevention and control mechanism press conference is the cumulative sum of the medical insurance fund balances over the years.

According to the "2019 Medical Security Development Statistical Express" previously released by the National Medical Insurance Administration, the cumulative balance of the basic medical insurance fund in 2019 was 2,691.211 billion yuan.

Previously, excessive balances in medical insurance funds were considered by some scholars to deviate from the principle of "balance of expenditures and slight surpluses" and easily lead to "impulse for misappropriation."

However, in the past two years, the basic medical insurance fund financing growth (19.3% and 9.1%) has been continuously lower than the expenditure growth (23.6% and 11.9%). The pressure on medical insurance fund expenditures has increased, and it is still unknown whether the balance fund will be affected in the future.

In addition, some scholars have previously worried whether directly incorporating the new crown vaccine into the national immunization plan will affect the withdrawal of funds from vaccine companies, ultimately leading to insufficient future R&D motivation and investment by companies.

Li Tao said at the press conference that day that as the production scale and vaccination scale of the new crown vaccine continue to expand, and the number of products on the market continues to increase, the price will also change accordingly.

“Relevant government departments will also take measures to formulate corresponding price formation mechanisms to guide the price of the new crown vaccine into an economical and reasonable range.