Yahoo Finance Foreign drug giants behind challenge to NHS rationing
The influence of overseas drugs giants in the UK healthcare system could come under scrutiny after it emerged that foreign firms are the driving force behind a judicial review challenge to new NHS drug pricing powers.
Senior industry sources said this week’s action had divided the £60bn life sciences industry, with some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical manufacturers blamed for controversially beating a path to the High Court.
Trade body the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) is behind the judicial review application, which seeks to overturn drug price controls introduced by health costs watchdog NICE in April.
The ABPI’s only two British board members, the FTSE 100 duo GSK and AstraZeneca, are understood to dislike the changes but are opposed to legal action which they see as unconstructive and aggressive. Instead the impetus has come from among the 14 overseas behemoths at the board table, including America’s Pfizer and Merck, Switzerland’s Roche and Novartis, Germany’s Bayer and France’s Sanofi.
Under the new rules NHS England does not have to automatically fund drugs expected to cost more than £20m in any of the first three years they are in use. It can instead opt to try to negotiate down the cost or ration their roll-out.
Both GSK and AstraZeneca have publicly expressed reservations, and an industry source explained: “There’s a strong correlation between the level of long-term and strategic investment in the UK and feeling on the judicial review”. The ABPI says it is “reluctantly” mounting the challenge because it fears patients will miss out on the latest treatments. When asked which firms supported the action the ABPI said it was “a majority view”.
