Medical device industry appealed to the government to assign capping of price of medical devices to the consumer affairs and revenue department only. This demand comes in the wake of ongoing plans of the health ministry and the department of pharmaceuticals to cap the prices of medical devices through the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) as there is no price control in this sector.
Though domestic medical device industry is open to the idea of price control on medical devices, the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED) insisted that deliberations and strategising should be done by consumers affairs and revenue department only, rather than the NPPA. The association contends that there is an urgent need to cap the prices of medical devices for better transparency and providing fair business opportunity for domestics manufacturers, especially in the light of competition due to uncontrolled imports of medical devices.
However they insisted that NPPA could not be seen as the authority to do so, as it is the body assigned to monitor the prices of the medicines. There is already an ongoing demand for separate identity for the medical device industry thus mixing the pricing will only complicate the matter further, stressed Rajiv Nath, forum coordinator of AIMED.
The government is understood to be contemplating to cap the maximum retail price of the medical devices especially those like stents, catheters and implants etc. Through this initiative they plan to keep a check on the margins and commissions on these products, thus reducing the price of the end product substantially.
Nath pointed out, “We do agree that there needs to be some kind of policing in the price as it is not only affecting the patients but also the domestics manufactures at large. This is mainly because most of the products in this category are imported devices which even though highly priced are always recommended by the doctors widely, due to perks and commissions. Having a pricing cap will remove all this issues for domestics manufactures and open up a fair ground for competition for all.”
Nath insisted that since medical device does not fall under the purview of drugs, NPPA does not have either the expertise nor any idea about the ground realities of the industry. “Moreover, so far all our pricing related issues and problems are addressed by the consumer affairs and revenue department, so it is only feasible if the government will set a core group under them to handle the medical devices capping issues,”Nath said.