New pharma policy: How it impacts your wallet

Drugs to treat a variety of disorders, especially lifestyle-related ones, will soon get cheaper by as much as 21 percent and it's all thanks to the new drug pricing policy that has just received cabinet approval. CNBC-TV18's Archana Shukla reports.

If you suffer from high blood pressure or swallow pills to keep you cholesterol in check, here's some good news. Those huge medical bills that could give you a heart-attack will soon go down by nearly 21 percent, all because the EGoM of drug pricing has finally decided on a formula to fix the maximum retail price of essential drugs.

Let's get specific:

A 10-tablet pack of cholestrol lowering drug Atorvastatin -- that's brands like Atocor, Atorlip and Atorvas -- is priced anywhere between Rs 6.90 to Rs 80.53. But with the new formula in place, the price of nearly 40 of these brands will drop to a maximum of Rs 30.12 -- for people using the most-expensive brand, that's a drop of 63 percent.

Similarly, a 10-tabletpack of blood thinner drug Clopidogrel, which is available under 50 brand names including Ceruvin and Clopivas, is currently priced at Rs 880 and will see MRP capped at Rs 70.89 rupees. This works out to an average price drop of 30 percent and 91 percent for the most expensive brand.

With this new policy, nearly 30 percent of the drugs on the market will see prices coming down because the policy covers 348 essential drugs that are commonly used to treat maladies ranging from hypertension to allergies to cancer to diabetes to renal failure.

The new policy may be a god-send for patients, but not for drug companies. They say lower pricing will put pressure on margins and hit profitability. Early estimates say the profits of the overall industry may fall by nearly 4,200 crore rupees due to this move.

Also read:'Pharma pricing policy is bitter pill for biz, public'