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There still is no single pill to address the pricing concerns involving the pharmaceutical industry.
However, different formulae to tackle the pricing of medicines have emerged from the half-a-dozen presentations made to the Group of Ministers by the drug industry and distributor organisations.
The brand leader in a particular therapeutic category is not quite the price leader, said the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), casting its lot with the proposed formula of capping the price of a particular medicine by taking the weighted average of the top three brands.
This formula proposed in the draft National Pharmaceutical Policy 2011 does not find favour with the Union Health Ministry, among others, as they feel it leaves the door open for lower priced drugs to increase their prices.
Illustrating its point, the IPA said, Cefixime 200 mg tablets that features on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) may be a brand-leader but ranks 113 among the 136 generic medicine brands in the same category.
Nevertheless, IPA representatives are open to the formula suggested by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council that suggested a dual strategy: cost-based pricing in categories where there are monopolies of few products; while the rest would be left to competition to keep prices in check.
However, this suggestion was not acceptable to the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), a platform for largely overseas companies. About 60 per cent of the multinational companies would be under this non-transparent cost-based net, the OPPI pointed out, compared with 40 per cent Indian companies.
The OPPI, however, suggested that medicines with volumes more than one per cent be capped at their average price. This would cover over 90 per cent of the market, the OPPI said.
The industry and distributor associations were however in favour restricting the span of price control to the 348 medicines listed in the NLEM. The draft policy, however, proposed to bring the NLEM drugs and other medicines in combination with these drugs under the ambit of price control, thereby increasing the span of control from about 20 per cent to over 60 per cent.
The second round of presentations to the GoM is on Friday, where presentations of civil society groups and a member of Parliament would be heard.
jyothi@thehindu.co.in
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