Price cap on stents, knee implants: Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that price capping of coronary stent and knee implants has led to the savings of nearly Rs 5,500 crore for the common man.

Inaugurating several new facilities at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital here, Modi narrated the examples fixing the ceiling prices of stents and knee implants and subsidising dialysis treatment in district hospitals as key policy decisions that led to a cut in the out-of-pocket expenditure.

However, after the two price cap decisions, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is yet to announce fixing the ceiling price of 19 other common devices that include disposable syringe and needles, heart valves and eye lens used in cataract surgery, though the agency had collected information from nearly 300 medical device companies on the cost and selling prices of these items.

In February, the RSS-backed Swadeshi Jagaran Manch wrote to Modi seeking his intervention to impose price caps on all these 19 devices (that have been legally declared as drugs) and release the NPPA data on the trade margin. Till now the Centre has not responded to either demand.

On the ambitious National Health Promotion Scheme that seeks to provide Rs 5 lakh family insurance to 10.74 crore families, the prime minister said the implementation of the scheme would stop people's migration to bigger cities in search of medical treatments as those treatments would be available in hospitals closer to their home.

The prime minister also launched the foundation of Rs 330-crore National Centre for Ageing that will have 200 beds including 20 beds in the intensive care unit. The centre is scheduled to be ready by February 2020.