Patients are facing significantly inflated medical bills due to extreme mark-ups on common hospital consumables, with some items priced as much as 2,841% higher than their wholesale cost. For instance, an IV infusion set that costs Rs 11 in the wholesale market is often sold to patients at an MRP of Rs 325, while disposable syringes costing less than Rs 7 are frequently billed at approximately Rs 60. The price disparity is even more pronounced for high-value medical devices, including heart valves, pacemakers, and intraocular lenses, which can carry retail prices 10 to 30 times higher than their import landed costs.
This long-standing issue has been brought back into focus by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Maharashtra FDA Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe highlighted the lack of oversight in a post on X this Tuesday, stating, "The regulatory gap is structural: scheduled medicines are capped under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013. Most medical devices and consumables are not, leaving both the pricing and the information around it almost entirely unmonitored." Mundhe has called on the central government to establish clear guidelines regarding the permissible margin between procurement prices and the declared MRP.
Previous investigations by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) have consistently revealed that many private hospitals purchase these items at minimal costs but charge patients the full, inflated MRP. While the government has previously intervened in specific instances—such as capping prices for cardiac stents and orthopaedic knee implants a decade ago, and limiting trade margins on items like pulse oximeters and glucometers during the 2020 pandemic—a comprehensive regulatory framework remains elusive.
The industry remains divided on how to proceed. The Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD) has acknowledged that the current Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013, is insufficient for managing medical device pricing. The organization has proposed a cap on trade margins, suggesting a limit of 75% for common consumables like syringes and IV sets, and a 50% cap for high-value devices such as heart valves and pacemakers.
