Drug prices are a scandal, and multinational pharma is only part of the problem

IF PRICING AT JAN AUSHADHI IS FAIR, WHAT ARE WE PAYING FOR OUTSIDE?

- R SURYAMURTHY

For a country celebrated as the pharmacy of the world, India remains shockingly hostile to its own patients. Walk into any chemist shop, pick up a familiar branded pill from a multinational drug maker, and chances are you are looking at a price inflated by 600 per cent to 1,800 per cent over its supply cost. That is not capitalism. That is not competition. It is exploitation, and the government's refusal to confront it is beginning to look less like oversight and more like complicity.

The latest Parliamentary Standing Committee report presents the numbers plainly. A cetirizine tablet with an MRP of Rs 21 reaches the stockist at Rs 1.85. A calcium supplement sold at Rs 327 is supplied at Rs 16.95. An acidity drug priced at Rs 170 costs the distributor just Rs 13.95. These are margins that would trigger investigations in most developed markets. In India, they trigger shrugs.

The outrage peaks in oncology, where patients have the least bargaining power.

One anticancer drug carries a printed MRP of Rs 38,215 but is available online for Rs 9,200. Another is listed at Rs 45,000 but sells for Rs 8,800. These are not discounts; they are fire-sale-level reductions that reveal the original MRP was unreasonable to begin with. When lifesaving medicines can be reduced by 70 per cent to 80 per cent without loss, the only conclusion is that the MRP was engineered for profit, not access.