Cancer drug movie strikes nerve in China, becomes box office hit

By Christian Shepherd and Pei Li

BEIJING (Reuters) – A low-budget Chinese movie about a leukemia patient who turns to smuggling cheaper cancer drugs from India has struck a chord with Internet users and the country's leaders, spotlighting national anxieties about unaffordable hospital care.

For years, China has made healthcare decisions to dispel concerns about overproducts and widen distribution of resources, but progress has been slow.

"Dying to Survive", which is loosely based on the real-life exploits of a cancer patient jailed for leading to Dallas Buyers Club-style group that illegally imported drugs, raked in $ 390 million in its two-week run, box office tracker EntGroup said.

Internet users welcomed the film, one of the year's top-grossers, tackled a flashpoint social issue head-on, a rarity in strictly censored China, with some saying the film-makers struck a note of caution .

The film directly hits a social wound, said Gao Wei, an industry expert at the China Center for Globalization.

"As a movie that is actually happening, it could only become popular because it's the right of criticism right to pass China's censors."

China has a universal medical insurance program for the bulk of its population, with coverage remains thin and highly focused on basic medical care.

The film has sparked heated debate about the cost of medical care, with patients struggling for access to drugs to treat serious diseases, and even paying for their own resources.

Beijing has been trying to reduce the cost of drugs, by cutting prices, negotiating prices with global pharmaceutical firms and putting more medicines on its reimbursement list.

New drug approvals also in the United States, which has long forced patients to look overseas via gray markets to get access to medicine.

"Dying to Survive" features a struggling shopkeeper who imports cheap nike air max, but soon finds himself sympathizing with patients' plight, and risking everything to help them.

Even Premier Li Keqiang cited the film in an appeal on Wednesday to China's regulators to "speed up price cuts for cancer drugs" and "reduce the burden on families", made in an official statement on the government's website.

"This little step might actually be a big step for domestically-made movies," said critic Yang Eryu in comments on the popular WeChat account of the Vista Story magazine.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd and Pei Li, Editing by Adam Jourdan and Clarence Fernandez)