Drug MNCs lobby against price cuts of stents & knee implants

Multinational drug makers are pulling out all the stops in reaching out to the highest Indian government officials to express discontent over the drug pricing regulator’s decision to cut prices of cardiac stents and knee implants.

This time, the negotiations will be held directly by the international lobby group of drugmakers instead of their domestic offshoots.

ET has learnt that representatives of global medical device makers and pharma companies have met with various Indian government officials to express their views.

It is learnt that Brain Toohey, senior vice-president of International Advocacy of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), and the CEOs of MNC drugmakers in India met up with members of department of pharmaceuticals, national pharma pricing authority and Niti Aayog. This was to gauge the thinking of the government on the new pharma policy as well as intellectual property issues.

In their meeting with Niti Ayog CEO Amitabh Kanth, they expressed concerns over drug price cuts.

“Considering Amitabh Kanth’s closeness with the PMO, the idea of the meeting was to take the message to the highest officials of Indian government about the impact such decisions will have on drug companies’ investment in India,” said an official who was part of this meeting but did not wish to be quoted.

Another official said though PhRMA is not rattled, they have given some inputs regarding IP issues, some of them are regarding data linkages.

PhRMA did not respond to an email sent by ET.

Advamet, the lobby group of MNC device makers, has also met officials expressing discontent over the stent and knee price cuts.

In the last one year India’s drug regulator has slashed prices of stents and knee implants by over 70% using an emergency provision in the drug price control order.

Drug and medical device companies are not happy and some of them have even expressed that they would withdraw their high-end products from the Indian market.

US drug giant Abbott and Boston Scientific have already sent a notice to the price regulator to withdraw their high end stents from the Indian market. However, the regulator has blocked these companies from withdrawing their products from India till January 2018.

In a statement to the Press in August this year, AdvaMed said such price cuts would “negatively impact the future environment for investment and FDI in the country”.

“Any policy that impedes innovation, will not only make Indian innovators non-competitive, but will also deter global organisations from making their latest products available to Indian patient population,” AdvaMed had said.