The Supreme Court on Tuesday called it “carnage” that hospitals bought a cancer medicine for ₹2,700 and sold it to patients at an MRP of ₹27,000. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta made the remark while hearing a plea seeking uniform profit margins on essential medicines. The court has proposed a flat 16 per cent margin on essential drugs under the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) 2013, to apply to both hospitals and retailers. The bench said arbitrary markups on life-saving medicines made treatment unaffordable for ordinary patients. It noted that patients had little choice but to pay whatever hospitals charged on their bills. The court listed the matter for further hearing on October 12. The remarks rattled hospital stocks, with Apollo Hospitals falling about 6 per cent intraday to ₹8,122 before recovering some ground. The plea asks the court to direct the government to fix fair trade margins for all essential medicines sold through hospitals. Context: India’s drug price regulator fixes ceilings for essential drugs, but hospitals often add steep margins over the procurement price.