Why Does a ₹10 Medicine Cost ₹100? Profiteering from Illness and the Common Person’s Helplessness

Whenever a serious illness (such as cancer, kidney failure, heart disease, or paralysis) knocks on the door of any middle-class or poor Indian household, it is not merely a single patient who groans in pain within that home; the economic backbone of the entire family is shattered.

To settle the hospital bill, the mother’s earrings are sold off, two bighas (a traditional unit of land measurement) of farmland are mortgaged, and the family, trapped in the clutches of usurious moneylenders, is reduced to bonded labour for life. NITI Aayog’s own statistics reveal that in India every year, nearly 6 crore people are pushed below the poverty line (Below Poverty Line) solely due to the crushing expenses of medical treatment and medicines!

Now behold the bitter truth at the chemist’s counter that will open your eyes.

You go to a medical store with a doctor’s prescription. The chemist hands you a strip on which the MRP is printed—₹980. In utter helplessness, you pay the money.

Yet, if you were to find out the actual manufacturing cost of that medicine, it was produced for a mere ₹15 to ₹20!

Who gave legal permission to print an MRP of ₹980 on a medicine that can be manufactured for ₹15? Into whose pockets is this profit of 1000% to 4000% flowing? Is this the trade of medicine, or an organised daylight robbery of the common person under the pretext of illness and helplessness?

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The Triangle of Pharma-Mafia, Corporate Hospitals, and Doctors

In his book ‘Anokha Bharat’, author N. Singh exposes this syndicate layer by layer:

1. The Grand Fraud of Branded versus Generic: A generic drug contains the exact same salt, the exact same formula, and has the exact same therapeutic effect as any expensive branded medicine. At the government’s Jan Aushadhi Kendra (public generic medicine pharmacy), the very same paracetamol or blood pressure medicine is available for 10 rupees, whereas a private company sells it in branded packaging for 120 rupees! Yet private doctors never prescribe the generic name; they write only that medicine on which they receive a fat commission from the company.
2. Foreign Tours and Lavish Gifts to Doctors: In exchange for prescribing their medicines, major pharmaceutical companies sponsor doctors with family holiday packages to Switzerland and Dubai, luxury cars, and parties in five-star hotels under the guise of medical conferences. The entire bill for this luxury is tacked onto the patient’s prescription.
3. Deliberate Ruin of Government Hospitals: At the behest of private hospitals and the pharma lobby, government Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and district hospitals are deliberately kept in a state of squalor and neglect. You will not find doctors there; MRI and CT scan machines will perpetually be ‘out of order’, so that out of sheer desperation, the patient is forced to walk into the private nursing home across the street, where the meter starts running the moment you step through the door!

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The Actual Cost of Medicines versus the Open Plunder of the Market

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The Bitter Truth from the Book: N. Singh’s Ruthless Strike

Author N. Singh writes in the chapter ‘The Marketplace of Medicine and the Plunder of the Shroud’ of his book ‘Anokha Bharat’:

“When healthcare ceases to be a service and turns into the crudest, most heartless business, understand that society’s conscience is dead. Sickness does not come from God, but the medical bill comes straight from the slaughterhouse of corporate hospitals. In ancient India, Charaka and Sushruta regarded the practice of medicine as an act of virtue and righteousness; the moment you enter today’s corporate hospitals, it feels as though you have stepped not into a hospital, but into an abattoir where a price tag is being put on every single organ of your body. If the state cannot provide affordable medicines and free healthcare to its citizens, it has no right to call itself a ‘welfare’ state!”
— N. Singh (Anokha Bharat, pp. 182–183)

The author further demands a solution:

“The government cracks the whip of licences and taxes on liquor vends, but turns into a meek cat before the pharma-mafia raking in 2000% profits on life-saving medicines! Until an absolute legal cap is placed on the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of medicines restricting profit to no more than 20% over production cost, the poor of India can never be healthy.”
— (Anokha Bharat, p. 186)

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Four Epoch-Making Steps to Halt the Plunder of Medicines and Healthcare

1. Legal Mandate to Prescribe Exclusively by ‘Generic’ Names: There must be a strict legal ban on doctors writing brand names of any company; doctors must prescribe solely the chemical salt name so that the patient is free to purchase the most affordable medicine from any chemist.
2. A Legal Ceiling of 30% Profit on MRP (Price Capping): Printing an MRP higher than a maximum of 30% over the ex-factory cost of the medicine (including distribution and chemist commissions) must be declared a non-bailable offence.
3. Fully Equipped Jan Aushadhi Kendras in Every Block: There should be no shortage of medicines at Jan Aushadhi Kendras; all 2,000 essential life-saving medicines must be made available round the clock.
4. Making the Right to Health a Fundamental Right: On the lines of Rajasthan, emergency healthcare and life-saving medicines must be made a fundamental legal right of every citizen across the country under Article 21 of the Constitution.

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A Question for Reflection (The Book’s Message)

Will the value of a human life be decided by whether or not there is money in their pocket to buy medicine?

To understand deeply this bloody game of the healthcare system, the loot of the pharma mafia, and its lasting solutions, every conscientious citizen and doctor must read this chapter from N. Singh’s timeless book ‘Anokha Bharat’.