Radio programme, paying for drugs

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Ralph-YK

Ralph-YK

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It's up now. This is what the blurb says:
The Price of Life
The Bottom Line
It's hard to put a value on a human life. When you're well, perhaps you don't think about it. But if you're ill, getting access to the right drugs, whatever the cost, is a priority. But the NHS does not have a bottomless pit of money. And some medicines are judged too expensive to be freely available, so patients miss out on treatments that could save or extend their lives. There are usually two villains of the piece: The drugs companies for charging too much; the NHS for not stumping up the cash. In this edition, Evan Davis and guests explore how pharmaceutical companies price their drugs, the role of the NHS in deciding how much the medicines are worth and, in the case of generic or non-branded drugs, they'll ask whether competition is working properly to keep down the NHS medicines bill.

Guests:
Erik Nordkamp, Managing Director, Pfizer UK

Carole Longson, Director of the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence

Warwick Smith, Director-General, British Generic Manufacturers Association
 
Heard this last night - interesting (more interesting than the football! 😱). Thought the point of how we actually spend less on drugs and our health service than most comparable economies said a lot - we need to bring our funding up!
 
What a lot of rubbish. As a thyroid patient who needs T3 (the active hormone) to be able to function I have first hand of this. T3 is now generic - which according to the programme means there is competition and the prices go down. Not so in this case. In Europe a months supply on average is £30. Here in the UK the pharmaceutical company has now priced a months supply at £900. (no not a typing error). However, the UK chemists are only allowed to buy from that company in the UK and (so much for free trade in Europe) not from any of the other European countries. So as no other company in the UK make it they have no competition and can charge what they like. This being so, the doctors round the country are now stopping prescribing it. This not only reduces the quality of life to their patients it also leads to death. It also leads to more profit for the pharmaceutical companies because a low thyroid produces more cholesterol (statins), pain (pain killers), depression (anti depressants) to name but a few. As far as cancer research is concerned, the pharmaceutical companies must get millions from charities for this so there should not be so much to recoup that they cannot sell it at a reasonable price.
 
Lilian said:
What a lot of rubbish. As a thyroid patient who needs T3 (the active hormone) to be able to function I have first hand of this. T3 is now generic - which according to the programme means there is competition and the prices go down. Not so in this case. In Europe a months supply on average is £30. Here in the UK the pharmaceutical company has now priced a months supply at £900. (no not a typing error). However, the UK chemists are only allowed to buy from that company in the UK and (so much for free trade in Europe) not from any of the other European countries. So as no other company in the UK make it they have no competition and can charge what they like. This being so, the doctors round the country are now stopping prescribing it. This not only reduces the quality of life to their patients it also leads to death. It also leads to more profit for the pharmaceutical companies because a low thyroid produces more cholesterol (statins), pain (pain killers), depression (anti depressants) to name but a few. As far as cancer research is concerned, the pharmaceutical companies must get millions from charities for this so there should not be so much to recoup that they cannot sell it at a reasonable price.
Click to expand...
Why are they not allowed to source it from abroad? When my daughters contraceptive pill became generic, she got a box that had obviously been produced in Eastern Europe somewhere, and had a typed A4 sheet of patient information in English, folded up and shoved in the box.
 
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My blood test strips occasionally come from Greece, based on the box, but with the correct info in English stuck over the top. Same strips, same manufacturer, just a different source. Why cant they do that with every drug?
 
I wrote to my MP about this (together with others writing to their own GP). Some time ago there was a shortage of it and again we all wrote to our MP's and it was finally agreed that the pharmaceutical company could buy it from Germany and then sell it on to the chemists but the chemists were not allowed to source it themselves. This is the reply my MP received from Jeremy Hunt:-

With regard to the price of liothyronine (T3), in England, the selling prices of generic products are not controlled. Instead there is reliance on there being a competitive market to keep prices down, to delivery value for money for the NHS. However as there appears to be only one supplier of this medicine, there is no competition in the market. Whilst we have legislative provisions to intervene with regard to prices of medicines, any investigation would require detailed knowledge of the company's business to be able to make a judgement as to whether the price is justified.

International price comparisons for medicines need to be made with caution, particularly when used to compare prices over time. The comparisons can be significantly affected by the relative level of sales in each country of the products used in the comparison, the legal status of the medicine, movement in exchange rates and the proportion (and mix) of medicines expenditure included in the analysis. These vary from country to country and over time. Relative positions, particularly between European countries, will also be affected by the development of different price control policies in these countries.

Healthcare professionals in primary care have a duty of care and decisions should not be made entirely on the basis of cost of the medicine. If a patient's local clinical commissioning group (CCG) decides, on the basis of rational, proper consideration of the evidence, that a treatment requested by the patient and their doctor should be provided, patients must be provided with the reasons for that decision in writing.

Patients can appeal against this decision through their clinician or by contacting their CCG directly to make a formal complaint.
I hope this is helpful
Jeremy Hunt
 
Lilian - is £30 in Europe the co-pay price on prescription in other words subsidised by the Govt or can anyone wander into the shop and buy it?
 
It is on prescription but yes I believe that is the price people are paying for it or thereabouts. I have a prescription for it and I could in effect send my prescription to a chemist in Europe and get it for that price. However I do not pay for my prescriptions so no need to (although if push comes to shove I will have no choice) as I cannot function without it. However it might be the comparison costs between what the pharmaceutical companies charge their chemists or health service. The £900 is what they are charging our health service in the UK. It used to be also around the £30 but whoever has recently taken over the company decided to charge £900+. If someone kidnapped a person and held them to ransom it would be a criminal offence. Yet when a company does this, because that is what they are doing - pay exorbitant price or your patients will suffer - it is perfectly legal. These are the comparison prices for 100 tablets:-
Sweden - 100 tablets of L-T3 = £21.10
Finland - 100 tablets of L-T3 = £15.81
Norway - 100 tablets of L-T3 20mcgs – NOK 254.50 = 27.51€ = £21.65
Denmark - 100 tablets of L-T3 20mcgs – Thybon 20 Henning = DKK 190 = 25.53€ = £20.09
Germany - 100 tablets of L-T3 20mcgs -30.15€
Turkey - 100 tablets of L-T3 – Tiromel = £1.25 (info. from private correspondence)
UK 100 tablets of T3 - Liothyronine = £922.44 (based on 28 tablets at £256.2

However, when buying it personally from these countries there is also the postage to be added plus customs duty so roughly £30 to do a personal import.
 
What I am saying is this Lilian - you are a Swede. You take your scrip to the chemist and you hand over £21.10.

However is that the full price - or do the Swedish Government subsidise it? - which is what they do in France and Australia for instance. So y sis (naturalised Ozzie) and I can both turn up at a pharmacy she with an Oz scrip and me with my NHS one for the same drug exactly - and she will pay $5 and I'll have to pay $50.
 
People from UK have been able to buy the product themselves from these other countries, at the same price as it cost their nationals (that includes countries that are not in the EU as well), plus the postage to the UK and UK customs duty added. But those products are not generic, they have a brand name. Here, if it has a brand name then the price is fixed but as soon as it becomes generic they can charge what they like. It was supposed to be that generic ended up cheaper than brand names and at one time doctors were encouraged to prescribe generic instead of the brand name because of that. But it seems to now have worked both ways, by letting the company charge what it likes for generic they have decided as they are the only manufacturer of it in this country, and for some reason chemists are not allowed to source from elsewhere, they can charge higher prices. But as some people cannot get on with the generic T3 they have been forced to buy (even though they are exempt) the branded product from abroad. It is our NHS that is being ripped off. There was an article about it in the Times not so long ago.
 
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