Price control in pharmaceutical industry in the country is in a mess as the government is unable to finalize the new pricing policy and on account of total lack of cooperation by the pharmaceutical companies. As it is, effective price control is hardly on 50 drugs and their formulations although 74 drugs are under DPCO 1995. The 24 drugs were discontinued by pharma companies over the last 12 years and they have introduced hundreds of new drugs at very high prices. Thus, there are over 500 drugs being marketed in the country today. In other words, almost 90 per cent of the drugs marketed in the country are outside the price control. Initiative of the Union chemicals ministry to bring some semblance of price control on drugs outside the DPCO is being met by stiff resistance. Pharma companies are forced to comply with the ministry's 10 per cent annual ceiling on price hikes of decontrolled drugs. Price hikes of decontrolled drugs used to be 20 to 100 per cent in several therapeutic categories for some years. Many of these drugs, currently outside price control, are for treating cancer, hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol problems, heart ailments, etc. and required by millions of middle class and poor patients in the country. It is high time the chemicals ministry brought these drugs under DPCO as the government is not able to finalize the new pricing policy.
A new threat to the patient community is the high prices of patented drugs with the introduction of new patent regime from 2005. Patent offices in different parts of the country have already started issuing product patents to pharmaceutical companies, mostly to MNCs, since last two years. Obtaining a patent implies an exclusive marketing right for the product for 20 years and pharma companies believe they can charge any price for the product. Patent for a drug product and a very high price for it may be justifiable in case of a nonessential drug but that cannot be allowed in case of a life saving drug in a country like India. There has to be a government intervention in price fixing of patented life saving drugs. The government has realized the need for it and a 10-member committee has been already constituted to prepare a framework for price negotiations of patented drugs prior to granting marketing permission. A negotiated pricing model has to be accepted by pharmaceutical companies in case of patented drugs considering the monopolistic status of such products in the market place. Even some developed countries also have price regulation mechanisms for patented drugs in some form or other. Industry bodies like OPPI and IPA are not very happy over the government stand in this regard and are trying to put pressure on the officials. Left to MNCs, what the price they will fix for patented drugs has been already witnessed in India in the case of cancer drug, Gleevec, by Novartis.