India’s new drug pricing policy - Here's what Gauri Kamath (blogger- http://apothecurry.wordpress.com/) has to say

I was just going through another of the brilliant Pharma posts by  Gauri , and really needed to share what the post said.
Here's an abridged version of the same Check out the full story : at http://apothecurry.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/indias-new-drug-pricing-policy-will-data-be-the-stumbling-block/

• On December 7(2012) ,India’s National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2012 was finally tabled in Parliament. 
• The Policy envisages fixing ceiling prices of specified strengths of 348 essential medicines. The ceiling will be calculated as a simple average of all brands of the specified drug owing one per cent or more of value market share.  Effective execution therefore rests largely on data on prices and market share.

• Strangely enough, the Policy puts the responsibility of verification of all data squarely on the shoulders of the pricing regulator. “Wherever required this data would be checked by appropriate survey /evaluation by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority,” it says.

Although , you can find the Medicine Price Fixed by National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) Government of India using this link

http://nppaindia.nic.in/nppaprice/newpricesearch.aspx

This further adds to the confusion
It appears as if there is little choice in the matter. It may be that the regulator has examined the cost and effort of creating its own database  and dispensed with the idea as being unfeasible or impractical though it doesn’t say so anywhere. But as the Policy rolls out in April 2013, if it does, these are pertinent points to ponder over.


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