The availability of drugs improved. And when doctors wrote prescriptions, 80% of the time it was for drugs from this list. Now that sounds like a great thing but on the other hand, some cracks emerged too. You see in 2013 we shifted from cost based pricing to market based pricing. This meant that we simply looked at the prevailing prices of brands in the market and fixed the price based on that. We weren't looking at how much it actually cost a company to make the drug. Even the Supreme Court called this pricing policy observed irrational and said that the policy is not pro-poor but pro-companies. So yes, while the NLEM is definitely something that lends direction to
In today’s episode for 3rd April 2023, we tell you why certain medicines have suddenly become costlier