SC criticises high medicine prices; civil society groups seek regulation of private healthcare services

Amid intense judicial scrutiny of the pricing practices in Indian hospitals, civil society groups Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) and the Working Group on Access to Medicines and Treatment have called for urgent government intervention to regulate health care services offered by private hospitals. The groups alleged that patients continue to face excessive and arbitrary charges for treatment, medicines and medical consumables with little effective protection or recourse.

The demand comes amid renewed scrutiny of private hospital pricing. The Supreme Court has recently questioned steep mark-ups on medicines sold through hospital pharmacies, including a case in which a cancer medicine supplied at ₹2,700 carried an MRP of around ₹27,000. The Court has also questioned practices that require patients to purchase medicines from hospital-linked pharmacies and has asked the government to examine regulation of trade margins.

The civil society groups complain that the problem goes far beyond the price of individual medicines. They say that India lacks an effective nationwide system to regulate what private hospitals can charge patients for procedures, services, medicines and consumables. A leading corporate hospital chains charge on average ₹60,000 to ₹78,000 per day of treatment, an unacceptably high level of profiteering that is paid for by ordinary patients through exorbitant hospital bills, they alleged.

While the Clinical Establishments Act, 2010 (CEA) provides a legal framework for regulating clinical establishments and envisages government-determined ranges of charges, it has not been implemented and even where states have Clinical Establishment Acts of their own, many states have no provision to regulate the hospital charges, the groups say.

“Private healthcare has expanded enormously in India, but regulation has simply not kept pace, there is no regulation of rates of care, the patient has virtually no bargaining power over what they are charged," said Dr. Abhay Shukla, Co-convener, JSA.

"Leading corporate hospital chains have been earning huge surpluses estimated in the range of ₹22 lakhs to ₹55 lakhs per year from each bed, in the last few years. The CEA was passed more than a decade ago, but its non-implementation has produced zero results on the ground. It is high time that the government starts to regulate the procedures in private hospitals. A patient should know how much they will be charged before agreeing to a treatment," he said.