Govt must urgently fix the trade margins on all medical products, said activists
Supreme Court drew attention to a case in which a cancer medicine supplied at around Rs2,700 carried an MRP of around Rs27,000.
Shukla said, “The CEA (Clinical Establishment Act) was passed more than a decade ago, but its non-implementation has produced zero results on the ground. “Each individual human body needs different treatment, which cannot be anticipated in the beginning,” he said. He said, “Doctors are constantly threatened with legal cases since the inclusion of the medical field in the Consumer Protection Act. K M Gopakumar, co-convener, Working Group on Access to Medicines and Treatments, said, “When patients are required to buy these products from the hospital pharmacy, there is no price competition at all. Shishir Chand, Delhi co-convener of NGO People for Better Treatment (PBT), said, “Many patients come to us after receiving hospital bills running into lakhs of rupees, often without understanding how those amounts were arrived at.
Pune: The possibility of patients footing private hospital bills themselves being charged more than those insured emerged as a key concern at an online interaction organised by Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) and Working Group on Access to Medicines and Treatments with media representatives. It is high time that govt starts to regulate the procedures in private hospitals. Patients should know how much they will be charged before agreeing to a treatment. IMA president (Maharashtra chapter) Dr Santosh Kulkarni argued that there could be no uniform charges for two patients. If a patient is saved, the doctor is not thanked. If something happens to a patient, the doctor is harassed by the system. Steep mark-ups on medicines sold through hospital pharmacies are another challenge. The MRP cannot become a licence to charge patients many times the procurement price. Govt must urgently fix the trade margins on all medical products. When they challenge it, they are forced to run from one authority to another.”