Bangalore:
Swaminathan is a bank employee in Chennai, with a family including his wife, daughter and parents. His 83-year-old mother, Balambal, is severely diabetic and has been on medication for years now. From Rs 500 a month about 10 years ago, the cost of her medicines has shot up to Rs 2,000 rupees now.
With spiralling costs of medicines becoming a major concern for the common man, the government now plans to bring down the prices of 108 drugs for diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases.
"Wherever the profit margin is more than 25 per cent, in such cases NPPA (National Pharma Pricing Authority) has intervened," Ananth Kumar, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers told NDTV.
It's a bitter pill for pharmaceutical companies, especially the multinational ones. Most domestic firms do not have their products priced at a significant premium and hence, may not be as significantly impacted. Pharma companies resent being seen as out to make a killing at the cost of the common man. They cite expenses incurred during drug development - and the possible impact on quality if smaller players get into the business of providing cheap drugs. They also point towards the possibility of a shortage of drugs if manufacturers pull out of an unprofitable industry, claiming that imports may not meet requirements.
"NPPA has written a prescription for Indian Pharma without any diagnosis. Totally flawed price control policy which will cause drug shortages," tweeted Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of biotechnology giant Biocon.
But the government believes the move could cut price differences between brands that use the same ingredients for their drugs. With the new directive, the government is expanding the scope of price controls and could potentially cover the entire domestic market, unlike in the past, when only essential medicines were covered. Next on the government's price cap list could be drugs for cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, asthma and immunology.
The industry feels that this would increase India's regulatory environment, but companies operate under even stricter rules abroad, particularly in Europe.
Whether the cut in prices is a flawed policy or much-needed relief to those bearing the brunt of expensive drug treatments depends on which side of the debate one is on - producing or using the medicines.