Even as the US India Trade Policy Forum is meeting in Washington DC, the All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN), an NGO working in the health sector, has urged the Indian government to reject the bullying tactics of the US-based medical device industry as access to health products is non-negotiable. AIDAN has also demanded expansion of price control on other 20 more medical devices which are categorised as drugs under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

Condemning the pressurising tactics of the US-based medical device industry to undermine the Indian government’s actions to make health products more affordable and accessible for millions of people, AIDAN said the move of US multinational companies through the industry association, Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) to approach the US Trade Representative (USTR) with a demand to partially or fully suspend or withdraw India’s benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is highly reprehensible.  AdvaMed had approached the USTR with a demand to partially or fully suspend or withdraw India’s benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) which is expected to be taken up at the US India Trade Policy Forum.

This is a barefaced attempt to intimidate the Indian government and retaliate against its decision to fix the retail prices of cardiovascular stents and knee implants in the public interest and exposes the unabashed greed of the industry and its willingness to hold poor peoples’ health at ransom for the sake of maximising profits, AIDAN in a statement said.

In the past, the US biopharmaceutical industry has used similar tactics – backed by the US government – to pressurise the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) to roll back decisions related to the rejection of patents on critical medicines such as sofosbuvir for hepatitis C. Such pressurising tactics are now being applied by US corporations like Abbott, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson to try and get the Indian government to dilute/reverse price control measures on essential medical devices that are increasingly being used to save lives and improve quality of life, and also to preclude policy interventions to safeguard the public health of people in India.

The well-thought-out decision to regulate the prices of cardiovascular stents and knee implants put an end to the rampant overcharging and the exploitation of patients by hospitals, doctors and companies acting in cohort, the NGO said.

In the case of stents, data collected by the NPPA clearly show that cardiovascular stents were being sold by hospitals at extremely high markups from the price at which they were procured (for example, 436% for bare metal stents and 654% in the case of drug eluting stents, on average). This was an outcome of unethical business practices, established and institutionalised by the leading foreign stent manufacturers, which rely upon commissions to hospitals and kickbacks to members of the medical fraternity to boost sales and gain market share. Helpless patients were therefore being charged artificially inflated prices that bore no relation to the manufacturing or import costs.

The grievances propagated by the US medical devices industry are disingenuous on two other fronts. The Indian Government rejected the companies’ demand for differential pricing for cardiovascular stents based on claims of innovation due to the complete lack of any data to support such claims. In fact these companies (Abbott Healthcare, Boston Scientific and Medtronic) failed to submit verifiable and credible evidence to demonstrate clinical superiority of the so-called “innovative” stents. Closer scrutiny of the “innovative” stents showed that they are actually “me-too” products that were being sold at a premium in order to create more profits, to the detriment of patients, AIDAN in its statement said.

Calling upon the Indian government to uphold the constitutional obligation on right to health and reject any pressure to review price controls on medical devices, AIDAN further appealed to the government to approach the Competition Commission of India to carry out an investigation into prevalent anti-competitive practices in the marketing of medical devices, especially stents and orthopaedic implants.  It also called on the US government to refrain from exerting policy pressure on India for taking measures to make medicines and medical devices more affordable and accessible to patients that need them.