SC questions limiting trade-margin cap to cancer drugs, flags wide gap between procurement price and MRP

Parmod Kumar New Delhi, Oct 12 UNI) The Supreme Court on Monday questioned why the Centre's proposed cap on trade margins was confined to certain cancer medicines and asked whether similar regulation should extend across the pharmaceutical market, including medical devices, particularly where large gaps between procurement prices and maximum retail prices (MRPs) raised concerns over whether existing pricing mechanisms adequately protected patients from excessive markups. A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta took note of the Centre's proposal to impose a 30 per cent cap on trade margins for specific cancer drugs but asked why the issue…