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Patients are bearing the brunt of inflated MRPs on medical devices, often with little ability to negotiate prices or choose alternatives. The pricing distortion is also putting pressure on manufacturers and importers that follow transparent pricing practices, making it harder for them to compete and remain viable. The impact extends beyond individual patients: higher out-of-pocket costs, reduced competition and the potential exit of responsible suppliers could ultimately affect affordability, availability and trust in the medical-device market. This issue needs to be spotlighted

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 https://t.co/Ye9CVzr8qU