\n<\/p>\n
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has accused pharmaceutical companies of being \u201cshortsighted\u201d and undermining their relationships with the government after the two sides failed to come to an agreement last week, but what is the row all about?<\/p>\n
The dispute is over the financial terms for drug companies to provide medicines to the NHS, including potentially life-saving cancer drugs. In 2023, the government, NHS England and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) made a five-year deal that included drug companies paying a percentage of their income on sales to the NHS above a certain threshold. This was about 15%, but this year it rose unexpectedly to almost 23%.<\/p>\n
It has been called a \u201cclawback tax\u201d and was intended to \u201cpromote innovation and access to cost-effective medicines \u2026 while also supporting the sustainability of NHS finances\u201d, the agreement states. It essentially prevented drug companies from making runaway profits. The idea was to use a voluntary pricing scheme to ensure a \u201cpartnership approach\u201d between the drug companies and the health service. It was \u201cdesigned to balance medicines\u2019 costs for the NHS while encouraging growth and investment in the UK pharmaceutical industry\u201d, said Doina Ionescu, Merck\u2019s general manager for healthcare in the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n
There have been rising sales of newer drugs to the health service, increasing from \u00a36.9bn, when the percentage was originally set, to \u00a38.4bn, according to the government\u2019s figures. The government thinks this means there could be a \u00a3373m underpayment. It says the new rate is in line with the terms of the original agreement. However, some drug companies now say it is not worth their while to launch as many new medicines for use in the UK. They say the clawback rates are far lower in Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Belgium.<\/p>\n
Peter Wickersham, the general manager for the UK and Ireland of Gilead Sciences, one of the world\u2019s largest drug firms, said at the weekend that the UK government\u2019s approach means its Trodelvy drug for a form of breast cancer will not now be made available to people in England for one form of the disease. The ABPI says it is directly affecting NHS patient access to new medicines in disease areas such as cancer and contributes to the UK\u2019s poor performance in international comparisons of treatable and avoidable mortality.<\/p>\n
They are. The biggest firms make billions of dollars in profits every quarter. But they say that unless the terms are changed to bring them closer into line with other countries in which they can choose to operate, fewer medicines will be launched for use in the UK and patient outcomes could decline. Those that supply the US are also facing pressure from the US president, Donald Trump, to cut prices, which means they face falling revenues from a major market.<\/p>\n
Talks over a review of the scheme \u2013 which was due to run to 2028 \u2013 broke down on Friday after the pharmaceutical industry rejected Streeting\u2019s pricing offer as \u201cunsustainable\u201d. There is now a stalemate. The ABPI said: \u201cWe need to reach a solution that improves patient access to future innovation, allows the sector to fulfil its growth potential, and does not require industry to pay back nearly three times as much of its revenues as is required in other European countries.\u201d The government said it was \u201cregrettable\u201d the ABPI did not want to take its proposals onboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has accused pharmaceutical companies of being \u201cshortsighted\u201d and undermining their relationships with the government after the two sides failed to come to an agreement last week, but what is the row all about? Why are the health secretary and the pharmaceutical industry at loggerheads? The dispute is over the financial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[477,1545,10707,6680,1834,1225,1224],"class_list":{"0":"post-17681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-companies","9":"tag-industry","10":"tag-pharmaceutical","11":"tag-pharmaceuticals","12":"tag-row","13":"tag-streeting","14":"tag-wes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}