Bare metal stents get marginally expensive, drug eluting stents are cheaper
The apex pharma pricing body has decided to retain the price control on cardiac stents.
In its meeting on Monday National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority marginally revised the prices of stents. The new price ceilings are Rs 7660 for bare metal stents and Rs 27,890 for drug eluting stents. The prices come into effect from Tuesday and are inclusive of trade margin.
“… to prevent the cardiac stents market falling back to its old archaic state characterized by exorbitant margins leading to exploitative pricing, unethical profiteering…”
The earlier price cap for BMS was Rs 7260 while that for a drug eluting stent it was Rs 29600. In its order the authority said that it felt: “…after intensive deliberations on all the issues and available information/market statistics at its disposal, was of the unanimous view that cardiac stents being an essential drug under Schedule I of DPCO, 2013 and part of NLEM, 2015 having paramount importance on public health needs to continue to be kept under price regulation in larger public interest till the country is under acute and emergent threat of cardiovascular diseases requiring PTC interventions and to prevent the cardiac stents market falling back to its old archaic state characterized by exorbitant margins leading to exploitative pricing, unethical profiteering and an extraordinary failed market system causing unwarranted and unreasonable economic burden on out of pocket expenses of hapless patients and their families.”
Any manufacturer or institution or person not complying with the ceiling price and notes specified herein above shall be liable to deposit the overcharged amount along with interest thereon under the provisions of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013 read with Essential Commodities Act, 1955.The prices will be applicable till March 31, 2019.
In a related analysis, the authority also found major profiteering in the trade margins of balloon catheters etc used in cardiac procedures. The analysis found that prices ranged from 62% to the stockist for a cardiac guiding catheter to 405% in MRP for a balloon catheter. In other words for an item like balloon catheter the patients pays more than four times the actual cost of the item while the distributor pays more than double (234% margin).
