Mumbai: Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe has formally petitioned the Department of Pharmaceuticals and the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to overhaul the pricing framework governing hospital consumables, citing massive markups between wholesale procurement rates and maximum retail prices (MRPs). In an official submission backed by state-wide market survey data, Mundhe urged central regulators to enforce trade margin rationalisation or place critical consumables under structured price monitoring to protect vulnerable patients from predatory billing practices.
The Maharashtra FDA’s market inspection uncovered stark price inflation across routinely used clinical supplies. An intravenous infusion set purchased at a trade price of 11.05 rupees carried an MRP of 325 rupees, representing a 2,841 per cent markup. Similarly, disposable syringes procured at 6.75 rupees were priced at an MRP of 57.20 rupees, while urinary catheters acquired for 29.41 rupees were marked up to 310 rupees on hospital shelves. Mundhe characterized the wide information disparity as a public health failure, pointing out that upstream manufacturers and intermediaries artificially inflate printed packaging figures long before products enter hospital wards.
Mundhe underlined that hospital consumables are non-elective necessities, leaving hospitalized patients without the ability to verify procurement costs, compare brands, or seek competitive alternatives during emergency medical care. Highlighting a major regulatory gap, he noted that while essential scheduled medicines remain bound by ceiling rates under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 2013, the majority of medical devices and consumables escape comparable pricing controls. The regulator insisted that bridging this gap through statutory margin limits and comprehensive price monitoring is critical to curbing out-of-pocket medical expenditure across the country.
