Stung by the Supreme Court's criticism for failing to finalise the national drug pricing policy, the Group of Ministers (GoM) on pharmaceutical policy headed by union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar will meet on September 27 to thrash out the long-pending issue and to finalise the policy.
The Supreme Court had recently criticized the government on this issue and had given ultimatum that if the government does not finalise the policy in two weeks time, then the court will pass an interim order. After that the government has sought some more time from the court to finalise the policy on the pleas that it is studying the models in other countries.
The GoM, which broadly agreed to limiting price control to 348 medicines of the National List of Essential Medicines and their 614 dosages, will study more international models on pricing mechanism before taking a final view as still opinion divided on adopting the method.
However, the main issue before GoM was not the extent of regulation, but the mechanism to fix prices of essential medicines, it is learnt. The issue remained still complex and unresolved after different ministries stuck to divergent opinions. The Health Ministry continued to bat for cost-based mechanism which is supported by public interest organizations and health activists, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) and Commerce Ministry stood for market-based mechanism.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's directive, the next meeting is widely expected to be crucial in taking a final call on the pricing mechanism that should be adopted for the essential medicines under the policy.
Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister M K Alagiri, Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Jena and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia are the other members of the GoM, which was constituted by the Prime Minister in 2009 to finalise a mechanism to control the prices of 348 essential drugs and their combinations to make medicines affordable to the people of this country.