Nowadays, public hospitals are required to conduct bidding for the purchase of equipment and medicines, which is convened by the government department responsible for bidding in the area where the hospital is located. This is to prevent corruption and commercial bribery in the medical industry on the one hand, and to curb the unlimited increase in medical costs on the other. However, nowadays, the results of bidding are often contrary to our wishes, especially in respect of drugs. After any pharmaceutical manufacturer has won a tender, because the price of the tender is relatively low, the profit of the drug will often be reduced by more than 50%, so the manufacturer will usually stop the production of the drug immediately, and replace it with a similar effect of the drug, and the tender of the hospitals do not have the means to purchase the winning drug, but can only look for the next best thing, to purchase the winning manufacturer of the production of the replacement drug, which, on the contrary, raised the price of the drug, which has increased the cost of medical care inadvertently. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.
Comparatively speaking, pharmacies have to face competition in a market economy, and according to the law of value, companies can only make a profit by purchasing at a low price and selling at a high price, so pharmacies don't need to conduct tenders, and they will also choose to buy lower-priced medicines.