The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA), which has an unimpressive past record of recovering overcharged amount from drug manufacturers, will have to pull its socks to ensure that it does not falter in the case of life saving coronary stents too which are now in the list of essential medicine with a ceiling on their sale price.
Stents are a small mesh tube that's used to treat narrow or weak arteries. Cardiac stents are often used as part of a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a procedure that restores blood flow through narrow or blocked arteries.
In an order to make them affordable to common man and end unethical practices adopted by doctors, hospitals and manufacturers who had been selling it an exorbitant prices, the NPPA on Tuesday published the notification ceiling prices of bare metal stents to Rs 7,260 and drug eluting stents (DES) including metallic DES and bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS)/ biodegradable stents to Rs 29,600.
The notification adds "any manufacturer or institution or person not complying with the ceiling price and notes specified hereinabove shall be liable to deposit the overcharged amount along with interest thereon under the provisions of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013 read with Essential Commodities Act, 1955."
This means, that if the stents are found to be sold at higher prices or patients complaints, the NPPA will take action against them. However, the NPPA's track record in recovering dues from the companies for overcharging essential medicines from patients has been poor. Its action in case of stents may too prove futile unless it tighten its noose on the defaulters.
Data speaks. The Government has been able to recover just Rs 386.07 crore as fine, a mere 7.83 per cent of the total Rs 4,928.09 crore which has been slapped on drug companies for overcharging, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir had said in a written reply to the lok Sabha.
Giving details of the unrecovered amount, the minister said cases under litigation currently amounted to Rs 3,701.21 crore while recovery cases pending with collectors stood at Rs 72.26 crore.
Besides, Rs 5.41 crore are under BIFR/official liquidator. Ahir said action for recovery of the overcharged amount is taken as per the provisions of Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 1995 and DPCO, 2013.
In some cases, the demands raised for overcharging have been challenged in courts, he said.