Resolution passed to take up issue of expensive medicines with Centre

He demanded that Centre should formulate a policy to regulate the prices of the drugs.

Dr Charanjit said there was huge difference in prices of medicines of same salt, depending on the manufacturer. Advocating the use of generic medicines, he said government hospital doctors were not recommending generic medicines, but asking patients to get ethical ones, despite the fact both had same salt and efficacy.

He added that it should be made mandatory for the doctors to prescribe generic medicine. He pointed out, “As per norms, the doctor is supposed to prescribe only the salt and not do branding of any particular [pharmaceutical] company.”

AAP MLA Principal Budh Ram stressed on the need of having Jan Aushadhi centres in every hospital. He underlined that generic medicines in such centres were much cheaper than the ethical ones of same salt. Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, while supporting the resolution, also raised the issue of “fleecing” patients by private hospitals where he said “even dead person is shown to be on ventilator”, just to charge more bill. Khaira added, “Sometimes, people have to resort to sit ins to get the dead body from private hospitals.”

Deputy leader of opposition and Congress MLA Dr Raj Kumar said, “Three percent of population in Punjab goes below poverty line every year in the State, while purchasing these [highly priced] medicines.”

He said while prices of 388 scheduled drugs is fixed, there was no capping on non-scheduled drugs. Dr Kumar suggested that non-scheduled drugs should also be categorized into scheduled drugs to regulate their prices. He also opined that GST, which ranged from five percent to 18 percent on drugs, should be totally waived off and made zero. On Aam Aadmi clinics, he said there should be separate cadre for these clinics so that services in other health facilities were not affected. Dr Kumar said “in two-third of the diagnostic centres there were no radiologists and this was in violation of the PNDT Act”. He also batted for “designing a system that entails lesser expenses on medical education.”

Speaking in favour of the resolution, cabinet minister Meet Hayer too pointed out that medical education was very costly.

Asserting that Supreme Court guidelines were “taken for a ride” while sharply increasing the medical education fee, Hayer said, “At least some percentage of seats should be reserved to impart medical education at affordable cost to enable aspirants from weaker sections of the society to become doctors.” He added “The government can make them sign a bond of 15 to 20 years of mandatory service.”

AAP MLA Ajay Gupta said that primary healthcare in the State was finshed by earlier government under a well thought out conspiracy. He pointed out had primary healthcare been strengthened, the patients will not need secondary and tertiary healthcare. He asserted that AAP government had given a fillip to primary healthcare and “rejuvenated family physician concept” through mohalla clinics.

He also sought strict action against “big hospitals” who indulged in “black marketing or oxygen and medicines” during Covid 19. Akali Dal MLA Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi said, “It should be made mandatory that the medicines are given by pharmacists only on the prescription of a doctor.” He added that a bill should be introduced providing for punishment to chemists selling the drugs on their own, without prescription from the doctor.

He also said that it should be made mandatory for the chemists to keep generic medicines. AAP legislator Inderjit Kaur Mann, while speaking on alternate medicine for drug de-addiction said that a time frame be fixed as to how long an addict was supposed to consume buprenorphine and how and in what quantity it was to be tapered off.

Health minister Dr Balbir Singh said the AAP government was focusing on providing holistic healthcare. On Jan Aushadhi centre, the minister said “It was in the hands of MLAs and they can get these opened by co-ordinating with concerned deputy commissioners.”

Stressing on the need to regulate drugs prices, Dr Singh also expressed concern over “e-phramacy” noting with agony that such portals offer medicines with punch lines like “concession and very attractive offers”.

Maintaining that a balance had to be made when it came to private hospitals, the health minister said if the standard of healthcare was improved in government sector, “malpractices” in private sector will automatically end as private players will come offering services to the patients with “folded hands”. On the menace of drugs, Dr Singh said terrorism, hepatitis, HIV, crime, hooliganism, women not venturing out, women not getting educated match, women going to deras and unable to conceive, it was all due to use of drugs.