Usha Sharma – Mumbai
Following the release of the Group of Ministers ‘(GoM) recommendations on the national pharmaceutical pricing policy last Thursday September 27, the Supreme Court is expected to review the same at its next hearing on the matter, scheduled for October 3, 2012.
According to ministry sources, the Sharad Pawar-headed GoM will be submitting its recommendations to the Cabinet in the next 10-15 days. The Supreme Court was initially to hear this matter on September 27 when it threatened to settle the matter with an interim order but postponed it to October 3 on the GoM’s assurance that it would meet and release its recommendations on this date.
Commenting on the GoM’s recommendations, Amit Sengupta, co-convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan said that the price fixation should include combinations of essential medicines instead of only covering the 348 drugs mentioned in NLEM and their formulations. He favours the cost based rather that the market based pricing as a price fixing mechanisms.
In fact, the GoM’s recommendations have not been as harsh as expected. Rikesh Vinod Parikh,Vice-President Equities, Motilal Oswal Financial Services has pointed out that the proposed policy is relatively better than general expectations since combination drugs have been kept outside the purview of price control. It was generally perceived that combinations will be subjected to price controls, thus increasing the overall span of price control to ~60 per cent. If combinations are kept outside the purview of price controls, then the span of price control will be about 30-40 per cent rather than 60 per cent.