Exorbitant pricing of drugs is ‘extortion': Supreme Court

If this is not extortion, then what is it, says SC on allowing retailers to overprice drugs NEW DELHI: Expressing shock over patients and their families being fleeced by pharma companies and retail medicine sellers, Supreme Court on Tuesday said the exorbitant prices charged was nothing but “dacoity” in broad daylight and questioned the govt’s silence on the pressing issue faced by citizens.A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said price fixation of medicines was very important as people were being forced to sell their assets and ornaments to purchase medicines and suggested that all medicines should be brought under the purview of the price control mechanism and be made available under govt-sponsored Jan Aushadhi Kendras. Referring to a cancer drug without naming it, the bench said the pharma company supplied it to retailers at Rs 2,770 but it was sold to patients at an MRP of Rs 27,000.“There are medicines, essential medicines for cancer, which the MRP is 27,000 and the PTR (price to retailer) is Rs 2,700. That’s absolute rampage, carnage, broad daylight dacoity. How can a patient be cheated for a medicine, which the manufacturer sells to the retailer at Rs 2,700 and the MRP is printed at Rs 27,000? It is ten times. It is very surprising that the authorities who are supposed to take a decision on this are absolutely silent. We don’t need to spell out the reason for that,” the bench said.Additional solicitor general K M Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, told the bench that the govt was not taking an adversarial approach in the matter and it would remain the govt’s endeavour to make medicines available to all. But the bench interrupted him and pointed out that the issue was not about availability but about making them available at a reasonable price.“If that is not extortion, then what is it? People sell their houses, sell their ornaments for getting medicines... Price fixation is very important and all medicines should be brought under price fixation policy. If all medicines are important, then why keep some medicines out of it?” the bench asked. The court was hearing PILs filed by SC advocate K C Jain and Agra-based doctor Sanjay Kulshresthra seeking the court’s intervention on price fixation of medicines. Bench expressed surprise at the huge disparity in pricing The petitioners placed before the court bills to demonstrate how drugs were being overpriced by pharma companies or by printing a much higher MRP than their actual retail price in the open market, which allowed retailers to sell the medicines at 10-16 times their actual cost. Giving an example, Kulshresthra told the court that the MRP of an antibiotic named Tigebex 50 mg was Rs 5,635 and was sold at that price in corporate hospitals but the same was being sold in the open market at just Rs 350.“In other words, the hospital is charging 16 times its actual retail cost in the market,” he said.The bench expressed surprise at the huge disparity in pricing and said, “Why this disparity at all? A medicine which is, as a matter of fact, sold by the manufacturer to the retailer at 10% of its MRP, why has it got this high MRP? Why should there be such disparity? It is a clear cut case of fraud on the face of it.”Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for pharma companies, said they were not the ones making money out of it and sought time to place data before the court, which was allowed.