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National Seminar on Price Regulations: Impact on Accessibility & Industry Perspective at Delhi

 

Clinical courses

Considering the Indian population, the country's economic condition including the unequal distribution of wealth and particularly, the overall health issues faced by a substantially high number of people, the government is very active in ensuring equitable distribution and availability of medicines and medical technologies at fair prices. In respect of the price control of drugs, the central government acts through the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), a body that was set up in 1997 especially for this purpose.

National Seminar on

Price Regulations: Impact on Accessibility & Industry Perspective

Thursday, 20th October 2016, 09:45am, PHD House, New Delhi

As public and private players grapple with rising costs for many prescription drugs, there is increasing debate over the extent to which some form of price controls may be warranted.

Price regulation in the pharmaceutical and medical technologies industry can be a double – edged sword. While the policymakers typically aim at making the drugs more affordable, price control on drugs may have adverse effects on availability.

Industry is not looking at this as a positive step due to : Firms may exit a category under regulation due to low profit prospects.

Lesser profits may also act as a barrier to entry for new firms. Further, firms may shift away marketing focus from the drugs under price control, and reduce detailing and promotion efforts for these drugs. These factors may eventually lead to a drop in sales volume for these drugs.

There was also a drop in R&D resulting in fewer new introductions of generic drugs and there has been reduced competition since India expanded its list of priced-controlled medicines two years ago. These trends can strengthen “oligopolistic behaviour, which will result in reduced set of choices for the doctors and patients,” according to the report, which was conducted by IMS Health.

Nonetheless, price controls implemented in China, the Philippines and South Korea, where the research firms say caps had limited impact on improving access. In China, in fact, price controls reduced availability and some drugs were replaced with more expensive meds in hospitals and stores. China plans to replace set prices with market driven prices this year, IMS notes.

Meanwhile, the overall market share of priced-controlled medicines in India has been declining across therapies, falling from 78% to 70% between 2007 and 2015 and after the price control order was expanded two years ago, the sales volume of price-controlled medicines had a compounded annual growth rate of 5% compared with 8% for the same drugs prior to being added to the list in 2013.

While prior studies have examined the impact of pharmaceutical price regulation on delay in launch of new drugs (Danzon, Wang, and Wang 2005), pharmaceutical innovation (Vernon 2003) and research and development investments (Vernon 2003).

There is a particular need for health policy evaluations in terms of achievement of goals, which may help inform policy-making not only locally but for the wider international policy community.

Against this backdrop PHD Chamber in association with Department of Pharmaceuticals is organizing the above captioned National Seminar on ‘Price Regulations: Impact on Accessibility and Industry Perspective’ on Thursday, 20th  October 2016, 09:45am, PHD House, New Delhi.

The objective of the conference would be to deliberate and sensitize all the stakeholders regarding the various facets of Price Control on Medicines and Medical Technologies, its impact on availability and deliberate on mechanisms which can provide medicines and medical technologies at affordable prices while keeping the industry motivated to manufacture and the promote them.