North India Statesman
A sweeping investigation by the Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) has exposed a massive drug pricing racket operating across 214 medical college and private hospital pharmacies. The comprehensive audit of 130 critical care medicines and injections revealed extreme price disparities, with institutional procurement costs and the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) stamped on the packaging diverging by as much as 67 times. Out of the audited stock, at least 36 vital medications carried retail margins exceeding ten times their actual acquisition rate, spotlighting how institutional commercial arrangements systematically inflate out-of-pocket healthcare costs for captive in-patients.
Life-Saving Antibiotics Procured at ₹74 Carry ₹4,981 MRP
The starkest discrepancy emerged in the procurement records of Polymyxin-B, a critical reserve antibiotic deployed against severe, drug-resistant hospital-acquired bacterial infections. Regulatory teams discovered that 5,00,000-unit vials of the brand GUFIPOL were acquired by hospital pharmacies for a baseline cost of just ₹74.09. However, the commercial cartons arrived pre-printed with an official MRP of ₹4,980.94—representing an exorbitant retail markup of nearly 67 times. In a parallel batch of the identical dosage, procurement receipts logged an acquisition price of ₹90 per unit alongside a printed retail tag of ₹4,528.10, maintaining a 50-fold markup on critical care patients.
Oncology Formulations and Surgical Consumables Multiply Markups
The price manipulation scheme extends far beyond antibiotic injections into high-stakes oncology formulations and basic surgical equipment. The cancer therapy drug Bevacizumab (400 mg) was supplied to institutional pharmacies at an invoiced cost of ₹7,541.10, while its printed packaging listed an astronomical MRP of ₹69,995, generating an unearned margin of over ₹62,000 per single unit. Routine procedural hardware displayed comparable exploitation; a standard surgical three-way stopcock, purchased wholesale by hospital administrations for merely ₹6.40, carried a consumer MRP of ₹163—forcing vulnerable families to pay more than 25 times the device’s base value.
Institutional Monopolies and Regulatory Crackdown
The enforcement drive across 52 private hospital pharmacies in 17 administrative districts confirmed that despite obtaining these critical supplies at deeply discounted institutional bulk rates, facilities routinely billed in-patients at or near the inflated MRP. Private healthcare centers sustain these profit margins through captive in-house pharmacy monopolies, actively barring outside retail competition and restricting the open-market availability of equivalent generic formulations. In response to the documented price rigging, drug licensing authorities have issued formal show-cause notices demanding operational explanations from hospital managements, wholesale distributors, and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
