Supreme Court seeks wider medicine price controls

The Supreme Court on October 12 directed the Union government to develop broader medicine-pricing controls, questioning why a 30% trade-margin cap for anticancer medicines should not extend to other drugs. The bench set October 27 for the next hearing and asked the Centre to submit its proposed modalities by then. The government told the court that the cap would apply to a notified list of anticancer medicines, which could be updated periodically, while inexpensive drugs would be excluded. The precise status of the measure was described differently in accounts of the hearing; the government’s submission included plans to notify the covered list. Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta questioned the limited scope of the measure and the scale of markups on medicines and medical devices. The bench cited a saline drip line with a stated price to retailers of about Rs 11 and a maximum retail price of Rs 270. It also referred to an Indian-made cardiac stent with a retailer price of about Rs 5,000 and a hospital price above Rs 25,000. The Centre argued that broad intervention could disrupt market dynamics and affect medicine availability, including in remote areas.