Drug Companies And The NHS

The NHS is being charged by the drug companies by up to 10 times too much for well-known branded medicines.The OFT highlighted in a report as the most inflated routinely prescribed treatments for high cholesterol, blood pressure and stomach acid. It is estimated that overpricing is annually costing the NHS £500 million. It emerges that Britain spends more than any other country in the EU on branded prescription drugs. UK (population: 60 million) System: yearly spending on branded prescription medicines: £8 billion (£133/head). Limits set on profits of drug companies following negotiations every 5 years, but firms are free to set the prices paid by the NHS under the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS). France (population: 60 million) System: health service with population covered by compulsory insurance. Prices of drugs based partly with reference to cost in the UK. Yearly spending: £6.2 billion (£103/head). Spain (population: 40 million) System: each of 17 autonomous communities has its own health ministry, responsible for purchasing drugs within national guidelines. Prices of branded drugs are relative to substitutes. Yearly spending: £5.9 billion (£147.5/head). Sweden (population: 9 million) System: state-owned pharmacies substitute prescribed drugs with the cheapest available generic version in stock. Prices have fallen by 15%. Yearly spending: £1.5 billion (£167/head). USA (population: 298 million) System: public and private bodies act as intermediaries to negotiate prices. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable in a country in which the average family's insurance premiums have risen by 87% since 2000. [Data from The Daily Telegraph: 21.02.07] Pfizer, one of Britain's biggest companies, warned that the proposals would remove incentives to develop new medicines and urged the Government to reject the report. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI): "It is essential that the UK-based industry's world leading record of discovering new medicines (20% of the world's top medicines were developed in the UK) is not put at risk."