Faced with whopping cost of medicines for treating his ailing mother, a law intern on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to ban hospitals and their in-house pharmacies from compelling patients to mandatorily buy medicines from them at inflated prices.
The top court agreed to examine the plea jointly filed by the law student and his advocate father, alleging that the prices of medicines, medical devices and medical consumables were inflated in collaboration and connivance with the drug manufacturers.
A Bench of Justices S A Bobde and l Nageswara Rao issued notice and sought reply from Centre and all states on the matter in four weeks.
Advocate Vijay Pal Dalmia, the joint petitioner with son Siddharth Dalmia, appeared in person and said by taking advantage of the ignorance, their plight and adverse circumstances of the patients in hospitals across India, people were being compelled to buy medicines from there or their in-house pharmacies.
Highlighting the problems faced during the treatment of his mother who was last year diagnosed with breast cancer, the law student in his plea said she had to undergo surgery, which was to be followed by six rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments along with Biceltis injections every 21 days.
During the course of treatment, it came to their notice that Biceltis injection was sold to them at a MRP of Rs 61,132, while the same
medicine manufactured and marketed by the same company was being sold in the open market at a discounted rate of Rs 50,000.
Besides, on purchase of four injections, one injection was given free of cost to the patient towards the patients’ support programme by the company.