CITU general secretary and MP Tapan Sen has sought union chemicals and fertilisers minister Ananth Kumar’s urgent intervention to bring about effective corrective changes to the Drug Prices Control Order, introduced by the Congress-led UPA-II government in 2013. Sen said the UPA government’s deceptive price control order has created gross perversion in the drugs market, severely affecting the common people’s right to access to essential and life-saving drugs at affordable price. In a letter to Kumar on August 29, Sen said the Drug Prices Control Order (DPCO), 2013 has brought 387-odd drugs under the price-control regime but simultaneously the basis of stipulation of the ceiling price has been changed from the cost-based approach prevalent earlier to the market-based average price regime, thereby rendering the price-control meaningless rather deceptive. Moreover, the manner in which drugs were listed under DPCO suffered from serious inadequacies in terms of coverage of actual medicinal necessities/usage by the common people, defeating the very purpose of price-control. Therefore, DPCO needs a thorough overhauling both in respect of enlisting all the medicines needed and used as essential and life-saving drugs and stipulation of ceiling price to be made on a cost-based approach. The UPA-II government introduced the DPCO following direction of the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court never directed a switch-over from cost-based pricing to market-based average pricing, which is average of prices of brands of a particular medicine of all the brands sharing one per cent and above of the total sale. But the order departed from the policy so far followed to determine ceiling prices of medicines. This resulted in increase in the prices of essential drugs, both within and outside the control on the one hand, and phenomenal increase in the profit of the already high-profit-minting drug barons on the other. This departure was unwarranted since nowhere in the world, price control measures of medicines have been determined on the market-based prices only. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) was given the task of determining the ceiling price of all the medicines given in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) prepared in 2011. The UPA-II government took decision of changing to market-based pricing in its National Pharmaceutical Policy, 2012 when amidst the cost-based pricing system itself, the pharmaceutical industry had been earning large amount of profit and was growing by 15 per cent annually. The decision was more to promote the profit of the drug-barons, both domestic and foreign, than giving relief to the people in respect of their health care needs. Moreover, drugs listed under the DPCO had covered only about 18% of the existing market of essential and life-saving drugs, thereby leaving 82% of the drugs of regular necessity to Indian people out of any price control. According to NPPA’s calculation, this became further less to 15 per cent in the year 2013-14. As per NPPA’s own recorded observation, DPCO, 2013 covers very little in the important as well as regularly availed/used therapeutic segments like antidiabetics (14%); antimalarials (12%); anti-infectives (37%); anti-TB (19%); blood related (01 %); cardiac (29%); derma (10%); gastrointestinal (15%); gynaec (14%); HIV/ AIDS related (27%); hormones (44%); neuro/CNS (18%); pain/analgesics (10%); respiratory (06%); vitamins/ minerals/ nutrients (01%); vaccines (32%). This shows that the so called price control through DPCO ultimately turned out to be a deception of common people. In reality, generous relief has been provided to the already high-profit-earning pharmaceutical companies including the multinational companies that are fleecing the common people, sometimes even forcing them sell everything including themselves to survive from various ailments thrust upon them both by the society, environment and the nature. The pricing regime for the purpose of price control must be brought back to the cost-based regime and the list of drugs under control need to be thoroughly overhauled to include all drugs of essential necessity from all therapeutic segments. All the stakeholders including the consumers and the trade unions in the concerned sector should be consulted for the purpose, Sen said, requesting the minister to do the needful appreciating the gravity of the issue.