The government has decided to curb the long-lasting treatment and costly drugs. The government has called a meeting for this on July 26, which will be chaired by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya. In this meeting, the government will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies on the margin of medicines. The goal of this meeting is to regulate the prices of medicines and to rid people of expensive medicines. The government is planning to reduce prices of medicines used for the treatment of diabetes, kidney and cardiovascular diseases.
“The minister is slated to meet the industry on July 26 on the subject of trade margin rationalisation on non-scheduled drugs,” a Health ministry official was quoted by News18 as saying. The revision of trade margins will bring down the prices of critical drugs. Trade margins are the difference between the price to trade for manufacturers and the price to patients as the maximum retail price. The official was further quoted as saying that discussions were also underway on whether the announcement of price cut could be made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Independence Day. National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the drug price watchdog, has been working on the TMR plan for the past several months. In 2019, the agency had put a cap on trade margins of 42 selected non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines. Mandaviya had informed the Lok Sabha that the move helped reduce the MRP of 526 brands of these medicines by up to 90 per cent.