New Delhi: A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday (October 10) issued notice on a writ petition seeking directions for the regulation of advertising by corporate hospitals.Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia issued notice to the National Medical Commission (NMC), the Union of India and the Ethics and Registration Board, LiveLaw reported.The petitioner, Aniruddha Narayan Malpani, said that physicians working in corporate hospitals are unfairly advantaged due to a loophole that allows corporate hospitals to advertise themselves but not individual doctors.Regulations under the National Medical Commission Act, 2019 prohibit doctors from advertising themselves or soliciting patients.But corporate hospitals don’t fall under the remit of the NMC Act, LiveLaw reported.“… This dichotomy results in a situation wherein the [NMC] possesses limited to no authority over the advertising strategies employed by corporate hospitals,” Malpani’s petition said according to LiveLaw.It continued: “Thus, it becomes evident that, despite the uniform application of the Ethics Regulations of 2002 to all physicians without discrimination, those in association with hospitals are unfairly advantaged due to the advertising tactics employed by hospitals.”He went on to argue that this unfair advantage was making healthcare less affordable to the bulk of the Indian public.“… The unfair advantage that corporate hospitals have over private medical practitioners is on the contrary … indirectly giving corporate health care a boost at the cost of driving up health care costs and making healthcare unaffordable to the majority of the citizens of India, thereby making them inconsistent with the object of the NMC Act,” he said in his petition.The introduction to the NMC Act reads that it was promulgated to provide for a medical system that “promotes equitable and universal healthcare that … makes services of medical professionals accessible to all the citizens.”LiveLaw reported that after making a case that hospitals ought to have reasonable restrictions imposed on their right to free speech, Malpani argued for “rigorous guidelines” dictating the advertising practices of hospitals in order to close this loophole in India’s medical regulations.