A tussle over medicines pricing is looming in Broke Britain
Even by recent standards, this is not a cheerful week in the UK. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce his tax-and-don’t-spend autumn statement on Thursday. Everyone is going to be asked to pay more, probably for a rather worse time of it.
The pharmaceutical industry knows the feeling. The chief executive of Bristol Myers Squibb said last week he had a “significant concern” about the rising costs of a medicines levy, agreed between government and industry to cap the health service drugs bill from 2019. The scheme, welcomed at the time by the sector as pro-innovation, has ballooned in cost, in a way that the pharma industry says hurts investment.
Industry bleating about UK pricing is hardly new, particularly from US companies used to the peculiar and inefficient largesse of their own system. Getting a new drug on to the UK market rightly involves clearing exacting cost-benefit standards. Then the sector and health department have for decades wrangled over voluntary agreements that aim to balance the medicines bill with the desire to encourage innovation and provide access to new treatments.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Helen Thomas
