Top pharma firms get notices for overcharging

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has issued preliminary notices to several pharmaceutical companies for 613 cases of over-charging. 

The office order, issued on Friday, said companies which had been found overcharging included Sun Pharmaceutical, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Alembic Pharmaceuticals, Intas Pharmaceutical, Sanofi, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Zydus Cadila, Wockhardt, Cipla and Lupin, among others.

The pharma pricing authority’s previous list in February said that there were 634 cases of overcharging. 

The authority maintained that it was witnessing a large number of non-compliance cases every month. 

The latest office order stated that since violations were too many, the NPPA would now issue collective show-cause notices instead of individual ones.

The NPPA has the power to issue show-cause notices to companies that charge patients more than the ceiling price fixed for drugs that are part of Schedule 1 of the DPCO 2013. 

While the companies will be given an opportunity to reply, the regulator can impose a penalty on them subsequently.

Abbott and Sun Pharma feature on the list more than 20 times, Alembic 5 times, and AstraZeneca appears thrice. Cipla and Intas Pharmaceuticals have overcharged in the case of around 25 drugs and GlaxoSmithKline in 11, according to the order.

The companies could not be contacted for comments.

Some of the names in the list are common drugs. These include drugs to treat bacterial infections, eye drops, common tetanus injections and ring-guard ointment.

According to the notice put up by the NPPA, overcharging ranged from a few rupees more than the ceiling price to few thousands rupees above the cap.  

The NPPA has fixed ceiling prices of 680 drugs as part of the Schedule 1 of the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) 2013.