Moving to make it easier for innovative drug therapies to enter the Chinese market, the country’s National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) announced in August 2019 it will make 148 new drugs eligible for insurance reimbursement. Altogether, patients will be able to seek varying levels of reimbursement for more than 2,800 drugs and therapies. The drugs covered include more than 1,200 chemical and biological drugs and therapies produced by Western companies, more than 1,000 drugs patented by Chinese firms and more than 800 traditional Chinese medicines. But NGSA authorities removed about as many drugs from the list – 150 – as they added. Among the products removed were some deemed to have low clinical value and others that were replaced with improved therapies.