The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a public interest litigation seeking price regulation and trade-margin caps on non-scheduled medicines and medical consumables, after sharply questioning the Centre and private hospitals over mark-ups of up to 1,000 per cent on cancer drugs.
Source: Bar and Bench
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta was hearing the plea filed by advocate Kishan Chand Jain, which seeks mandatory generic prescriptions, strict initial price controls on non-scheduled medicines and statutory margin caps on medical devices under the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO).
The bench cited the case of a drug dealer whose wife was undergoing cancer treatment at a renowned private hospital. The dealer told the hospital the chemotherapy injection came to him at a dealer price of Rs 11,000, but the hospital refused to administer his injection and charged Rs 1,30,000 for the same injection. 'Can you show any justification for this loot, please? Why this difference? Where does the money go?' the court asked.
The court also flagged a saline drip line priced at Rs 15 to the retailer but billed to patients at Rs 250, and questioned what purpose the DPCO serves if such disparities continue.
Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for the Centre, submitted that the government has been constantly calibrating its pricing policies. The bench replied that Rs 11,000 to Rs 1,30,000 was no calibration, and added that when patients and lives are involved, such capitalistic thinking should not apply.
Source: The Hindu BusinessLine
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for private hospitals, defended the margins, arguing that hospitals incur heavy costs on salaries, doctors, infrastructure and technology. The bench rejected that justification, saying a commercial hospital charges for everything and cannot survive through what it called dacoity.
The Centre had earlier told the court that capping trade margins on anti-cancer medicines at 30 per cent of the maximum retail price was expected to save patients around Rs 2,500 crore annually and could reduce the MRP of cancer medicines by 20 to 70 per cent, according to an IANS report citing the Department of Pharmaceuticals. It also referred to a 2019 intervention in which the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority capped margins on 42 selected non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines, reducing the MRP of 526 brands.
Source: IANS via HiIndia
Before reserving the verdict, the court directed all parties to file written submissions. The judgment, when delivered, will decide whether tighter statutory controls will be imposed on the prices patients pay for medicines outside the scheduled list.