Posted on 12/07/2016 11:35:19 PM PST by granada
BEIJING (AP) — Medical device maker Medtronic has been fined $17 million by Chinese anti-monopoly regulators in the latest effort by Beijing to force down what it sees as unreasonably high prices.
Regulators concluded Medtronic, which supplies cardiovascular, restorative, and diabetes-related medical devices, suppressed competition by enforcing minimum prices its distributors were required to charge, the government said Wednesday.
Foreign automakers, milk suppliers and other companies have faced similar penalties. Setting minimum prices is a common tactic in other markets but lawyers say Beijing appears to see them as a barrier to competition.
"Competition in China's high-value consumables and implantable medical equipment market is inadequate," said a statement by the Cabinet's planning agency. It said preventing market forces from setting prices "increases the burden on patients and damages the interests of consumers."
Business groups welcomed the passage of China's first anti-monopoly law in 2008 as a step toward clarifying operating conditions. Since then, they have said it is enforced more actively against foreign companies than against their Chinese rivals.
There have been few court rulings to clarify the application of the 2008 law. That has fed uncertainty about how it will apply to global companies that are eager to expand in the world's second-largest economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
i.e. their stuff couldn’t be copied locally.
Communists worried about Monopolies?! That’s like Hillary Clinton worrying about vote fraud!
I've got a Medtronic device they'd love to copy.
It's a pacemaker nicknamed "The Bullet". It is the same size and shape as a .22 short cartridge. And it is embedded within my heart...having been placed there without invasive surgery.
I was the first to receive it in my part of the country, probably one of the first half-dozen-or-so nationally. It is a simply incredible piece of technology.
You might say that I took a bullet in the heart...in order to stay alive.
And a committed Medtronics supporter...
If they can get their hands on it, they can copy it.
They can get their hands on anything in country, so it probably has already been copied.
The med device market in asia is stiffly regulated to x number of implants per year, regardless of how many people actually need or would benefit from them. The number of implants allowed varies by country, but it is tightly controlled.
I do work for a competitor of Medtronic.
Design copy must be complete. I am sure the free traitors are proud.
I worked in the same field, albeit with the export of US made Class I devices, and both minimum and maximum pricing policies were fairly common. Hard to monitor and enforce, but common. In the U.S. at least they're also generally recognized as legal. It's one of the few ways a company can try to protect its brand value and its authorized dealers from grey market sharks. The Chinese just don't play by the same set of rules. And you're right, if they can get their hands on a product they'll copy it down to the flaws in the housing mold.
Their crap is CRAPPY, do not buy into their products. Badly functional products that can cause harm.
China copies everything then stiffs the original manufacturers. BMW brought a suit and was told the copy was different enaough so they lost in ‘court’.
There goes my bonus.
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