Western drugmakers may have to give hefty subsidies and forgo some profit on expensive cancer drugs if they want access to China’s “huge market,” the country’s former health minister said. With the cost of some oncology drugs topping $100,000 a year, Chinese officials may increasingly push for deals like one reached last year with Novartis AG (NOVN), in which the company agreed to donate three doses of its leukemia drug Gleevec for every one sold to the government, the former minister, Chen Zhu, said during an interview in Washington, D.C.
