Tukaram Mundhe seeks pricing review after survey shows 2,841% markup

…prices but charged patients the high printed MRP, sources told TOI.Flagging mark-ups as high as 2,841% on commonly used hospital consumables, Tukaram Mundhe, Maharashtra FDA commissioner, posted on X on Tuesday, " The regulatory gap is structural: scheduled medicines are capped under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013. Most medical devices and consumables are not, leaving both the pricing and the information around it almost entirely unmonitored. '' He urged the Centre to frame guidelines to address the "permissible gap between trade procurement price and declared MRP". Nearly a decade ago, prices for cardiac stents and orthopaedic knee implants were capped by…

…of Pharmaceuticals and National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), recommending guidelines on the permissible gap between trade procurement and MRP. Calling the gap a core public health issue, Mr. Munde said, “ The most expensive part of a hospital bill may never touch the hospital at all. A patient admitted for care has no way of knowing whether the price on a medical consumable reflects its actual cost or a markup fixed long before it ever reached the ward. “ Mr. Munde pointed out that the review of the findings of the survey and clear guidelines on the permissible gap between trade procurement price and declared MRP have been recommended to the Department of…

…to address the pricing of medical devices and has proposed capping trade margins at 75% for widely used consumables such as syringes and IV sets, and at 50% for high-value devices such as pacemakers and heart valves." Genuine device manufacturers and importers are at a clear disadvantage under the current system of unchecked hospital mark-ups. Ethical suppliers price their products transparently, based on ex-factory or landed import price, but when hospitals inflate MRPs by 10-30 times, the market rewards those willing to play the distortion game.…

…body. Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Nathealth secretary general, told businessline, the issue was “nuanced” and a framework was needed to capture the various layers of bringing out a device that is used by patient. “ Hospitals are not resellers of equipment… There is a clinical layer on top of what they are doing ,” he said, adding that hospitals may participate in the clinical evaluation and configurations, among other things, before a technology reached the patient. Some of the layers between procurement and delivery included…

…backs Mundhe's move Following Mundhe's call for revision of device pricing rules, the medical device industry has backed the move. Also read: Popularity was never my goal; what matters is public health: Tukaram Mundhe “ We urge regulators and policymakers to act on Mr Mundhe’s call by instituting structured price monitoring and margin rationalization, starting with some pilot studies on AiMeDs proposals as policy making by evidence ,” the AiMeD said in a statement late Tuesday. “Patients deserve fair prices, not inflated margins, and India deserves a medical device ecosystem that is affordable, ethical, and globally competitive,” Association of…

…of anonymity said the Committee’s recommendation for a 20 per cent cap on the difference between the landing cost and MRP of medical devices, therefore, raises a fundamental question over NPPA’s existing powers. “ A uniform cap would have to cover products that currently fall outside its direct price-fixing authority ,” he said. He said TMR could provide one route to address the gap, but it has so far been used only selectively. TMR has been applied three times: to select diabetic and cardiovascular medicines in 2014, 42 anti-cancer…