Cost-based pricing of drugs not suitable to safeguard interest of patients & pharma industry in India: Experts

A section of pharmaceutical analysts in India and abroad have claimed that cost-based pricing would not be suitable to safeguard the interests of patients as well as the pharmaceutical industry. The regulatory authorities have wrongly been focusing on price controls in the belief that this will boost access to healthcare. But the experience of other nations, and India’s past experience, indicates the desired outcome won’t be achieved via price caps because multiple hurdles hinder healthcare access in India – and it is these that need to be addressed, they claimed. “The efficacy of modern medicines has pushed average life expectancy in India from little more than 40 years in the 1960s, closer to the world average of about 67 years. But this success has sparked an increase in non-communicable diseases, which present-day treatments cannot cure. The situation makes it imperative to support the search for innovative drugs that cure such ailments. Price caps have the opposite effect, though, by disincentivizing the sale of innovative drugs or drug research in India. Patients with incurable endemic diseases will continue to suffer in silence since cures for such diseases may no longer be actively researched,” said David Taylor, Professor of Pharmaceutical and Public Health Policy at UCL School of Pharmacy, University of London, in a statement. Keeping this in mind, Prof Taylor believes healthcare authorities should avoid cost-based pricing or price caps. Instead, a balance is required between the public need for low-priced drugs, and societal needs for sustained innovation and access to affordable healthcare. Under the draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPP), expansion of the Essential Medicines list could include a wider range of products, backed by a narrowly-defined, cost-based pricing system. If this scenario comes true, producing and selling drugs for such treatments in India would be so unviable that supplies will be curbed, not increased. Dr H L Kapoor, president, IMA Himachal Pradesh State Chapter said “Since India has the lowest medicine prices in the world, more price cuts would be counter productive.” Low costs do not necessarily translate into improved healthcare access. Universal access to affordable, quality healthcare calls for robust investments in health infrastructure and other facilities across the nation, not just in urban areas. The experience of other countries such as Philippines has shown that driving down drug prices only benefits those who can pay because the poor who cannot afford medicine costs are unable to purchase drugs even when costs are lowered.” In India, low-priced drugs would be meaningless when 70 per cent of the population do not have primary healthcare centres (PHCs) near their homes. In some cases, rural residents trek as much as 20 km just to reach the nearest PHC, where most medicines are available free – provided stocks are available. The issue for the poor in rural regions is therefore not pricing but proximity and convenience, the statement said. Source:Pharmabiz