Government plans to cap prices of 50 drug formulations per month

NEW DELHI: Your monthly medical bills may now pinch you less.

NEW DELHI: Your monthly medical bills may now pinch you less.

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While the government has already capped the prices of 400 formulations in the last two years, it now plans to extend control by capping at least 50 formulations every month.

After a four-hour long meeting with National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority’s chairman Bhupendra Singh, minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers, Mansukh Madaviya, has decided that the government will now cap the prices of 50 formulations every month.

“Till now, the NPPA use to release the revised price list in infrequent intervals. Now, I have told them to revise prices of the remaining 450 formulations by releasing list in monthly slot of 50 formulations,” minister told HT. “The move will bring down prices of medicines for life threatening diseases by up to 80%.”

The formulations are used to make drugs for life threatening diseases, including tuberculosis, cancer and cardiac disorders, besides other daily used drugs.

The NPPA fixed the ceiling for 123 medicines last month. The government had earlier capped the prices of 22 essential drugs used for the treatment of cancer, HIV, bacterial infections and malaria, among others, reducing their costs by 10% to 45%. Apart from controlling the prices of life threatening drugs, the formulations to make polio drops, glucose, plasma sachets, hormonal injections and multivitamins have also been slashed in the last six months.

The calculation for essential drugs is based on the simple average of all medicines in a particular therapeutic segment with sales of more than 1%.