News Desk, AnyTV, New Delhi
Published by: Kirtivardhan Mishra
Updated Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:25 PM IST
Summary
“This shows that even doctor’s prescriptions can be manipulated. Pharmaceutical companies take advantage of free facilities to doctors and get patients to prescribe their medicines as consultations,” the court said.
Supreme court
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the demand for tax relief on the expenditure of gifts in the form of incentives, terming the game of promoting the sale of medicines by giving gifts to doctors as completely illegal. The petitioner pharmaceutical company Apex Laboratories Pvt Ltd had sought income tax relief by showing the cost of gifts to doctors to the medical partner as an incentive.
A bench of Justices Uy Lalit and Ravindra Bhat expressed concern over the practice of giving gifts like cars, gold coins, expensive electrical appliances, foreign trips to doctors of pharmaceutical companies. This is clearly prohibited by law, the bench said. This itemized expenditure is not allowed to be claimed as deduction. This is a matter of great public importance and concern.
“This shows that even doctor’s prescriptions can be manipulated. Pharmaceutical companies take advantage of free facilities to doctors and get patients to prescribe their medicines as consultations,” the court said. With this contention, the petition of M/s Apex Laboratories Pvt Ltd against the decision of the Madras High Court was dismissed. The High Court had refused to interfere with the decision of the Income Tax authorities against claiming benefit of business expenditure on the amount spent on gifts to doctors for creating awareness about ‘Ginkovit’.
Companies said – these gifts are not free, they charge the cost of medicine
These gifts are not technically ‘free’, the bench said. The companies charge their cost in the price of the medicine. In the end, the cost of these gifts is paid by the patient. This is a perpetual publicly harmful cycle. Prescribing such drugs has implications for ‘effective generic drugs’. Cognizance of such exchanges was also taken by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare.
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies complement each other
Justice Bhat observed that doctors and pharmaceutical companies complement and complement each other in the medical profession. Therefore a comprehensive approach should be adopted to regulate their conduct keeping in view the contemporary legal systems and rules. The bench said, doctors have a semi-trusted relationship with the patients. The patient considers the doctor’s prescription as the last word. Even if he is not able to bear the cost. Such is the level of trust in doctors. Due to this practice, this game of forcing the patient to buy medicine at expensive price is illegal.