A day after rejecting the applications of two stent-makers seeking to withdraw some of their top drug-eluting stents, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority chief indicated that supplies of cardiac stents in the country had not been affected.

All the stents available in the country before their prices were capped continue to be there, Bhupendra Singh, NPPA Chairman said at a media interaction here along with the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Harshadeep Kamble.

And while no product has been lined up next for price control, Singh told Business Line, they were gathering data on 23 other devices (including heart valves and intra-ocular lenses) and a reporting format has been finalized for some of them.

This did not mean that all products would be brought under price control, since that procedure involved gathering data on a product, defining its essentiality and bringing it under the Government’s National List of Essential Medicines. From that standpoint, there was no more price control on devices, he indicated. The 23 identified devices would be treated as non-scheduled drugs that are allowed a 10 percent increase annually, he said.

Asked if the NPPA was softening its stance on controlling the price on devices, he said, the Government was committed to making drugs and products affordable and accessible and would take steps towards that objective.

Monitoring insurance data

Earlier in the day, Singh was asked on the NPPA’s rejection of withdrawal petitions filed by two multinational companies on some of their stents.

Pointing out that companies who had taken a license to supply products in the country cannot decide to withdraw them, he said, the law had “windows” in it to discuss the companies’ price concerns.

Late last evening, the NPPA had said that it had rejected the applications of multinationals Abbott and Medtronic to withdraw their respective top-end stents. Abbott had sought to withdraw its products Absorb and Alpine on the grounds that price control had made it unviable to sell these products. Medtronic filed a similar petition on its Resolute Onxy.

Referring to representations made by hospitals to the NPPA chief , he clarified that the margins given to hospitals in the present price formula was not in for a review and that hospitals cannot behave like retailers selling products to consumers.

In fact, the NPPA is working with insurance companies, he said, to monitor if the price benefits from the price reduction on cardiac stents was being passed on to the patients, he added.

jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in

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