Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14421

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Cockcroft L.
Drug companies urged to drop NHS prices
Telegraph.co.uk 2008 Oct 7
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/health/3150282/Drug-companies-urged-to-drop-NHS-prices.html

Abstract:

The Government is urging pharmaceutical companies to lower their initial prices for new drugs, with the promise that the NHS will pay more for them if evidence proves greater effectiveness.

Full text:

Ministers see the move as an answer to whether patients should be allowed to “top up” NHS treatment for cancer and other medicines that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence judges to be clinically effective but not cost-effective for the NHS to pay for.
Senior Whitehall officials say some limited “top-ups” to NHS treatment will be allowed once the review of the issue by the government’s “cancer tsar” Dr Mike Richards, reports later this month.
But in an attempt to reduce the scale of that problem, weekly negotiations are taking place with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the trade body, to agree a “risk-sharing” scheme as part of a new long-term drug pricing contract.
Under the scheme, companies would initially lower the price sufficiently to get a drug under Nice’s threshold for approval. There would then be clearer rules for raising the price as evidence of clinical effectiveness grows.
Similar deals have already been struck for a small number of drugs and have long been advocated by pharmaceutical executives, including Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline.
The talks under way are an attempt to systemise the approach as part of the new pharmaceutical price regulation system being finalised for the start of next year.