Hospitals face regulator ire over stents

Are price caps a long-term cure to the malady, asks Subir Roy

When the government brought cardiac stents under price control in mid-February, the first reaction of a veteran in the medical implants trade is, “It took them 20 years to act!” 

He had begun in the 1980s as a part of the trade channel for pacemakers and got to see how many of the small time practices escalated in the ’90s with stents, sans the redeeming features. 

Pacemakers sold in the ’60s were cheap and came in a single basic model. Competition was partly on price, which meant patients weren’t fleeced. 

But there was another important differentiating factor between selling a