real hamster

[Tukaram Mundhe @Tukaram_IndIAS]

The most expensive part of a hospital bill may never touch the hospital at all.

A patient admitted for care has no way of knowing whether the price on a medical consumable reflects its actual cost or a markup fixed long before it ever reached the ward. That gap in information is, at its core, a public health issue.

A survey of hospital consumables in Maharashtra found an IV infusion set with a trade price of ₹11.05 carrying a printed MRP of ₹325 ; a markup of 2,841%. A syringe procured at ₹6.75 carried an MRP of ₹57.20. A catheter procured at ₹29.41 carried an MRP of ₹310.

These are not elective purchases. Patients cannot compare prices, seek alternatives, or question a number printed on a box while receiving care and the MRP itself is often fixed upstream by manufacturers and distributors, disconnected from the trade price by a wide, unexplained margin. The result is a system where the party bearing the cost has the least information to evaluate it.

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.

A review of these findings and clear guidelines on the permissible gap between trade procurement price and declared MRP have been recommended to the Department of Pharmaceuticals and the NPPA ; a step toward closing not just a pricing gap, but the information gap patients are left to bear alone.

#PublicHealth #GoodGovernance #Leadership #TukaramMundhe

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[real hamster @coolkidzeadwer]

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