Drug pricing: Govt gets SC rap for 'dilly-dallying'

The court asks govt to file response to petition alleging exorbitant profits made by pharma firms

The Supreme Court (SC) today regretted that the government was ‘dilly-dallying’ on the question of drug price fixation and asked it to file its response to a petition alleging exorbitant profits made by pharmaceutical companies.

The margins have gone up from 10% to 1,300% in some cases, the bench headed by Justice  G S Singhvi observed. The government has done little over a decade, he added.

The court was hearing a petition by All India Drug Action Network seeking to quash the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2012 as notified on December 7 last year.

The petition also wanted the court to direct the government to continue with cost based ceiling prices of all essential drugs as per DPCO 1995. Further, it sought a direction to bring all fixed dose combinations, patented drugs including drugs under voluntary licence, life saving drugs, and molecules in the same therapeutic class in all their presentations and dosages under price control so that medicines, an essential commodity, becomes affordable to the common man through substantial reduction of medicines prices.

The cost-based ceiling prices as per DPCO 1995 must be continued.

The petition, containing indepth analysis of the present price structure, wanted the increase of prices of raw material input be  reflected to  the extent of actual increase of costs of raw material in the market.

While demanding the setting up of a committee to formulate a mechanism for price regulation, there should be guidelines for automatic grant of compulsory licence to overpriced patented drugs that are essential and life saving in nature and to forthwith come out with a policy as to drugs and class of disease conditions that will be eligible for automatic compulsory licence.