Wes Streeting criticises ‘shortsighted’ drug firms for rejecting pricing offer | Health policy

Wes Streeting, registered with the demands of the sector, said it would not allow British patients or taxpayers to break down, and intensified the war with drug companies on the price of their products.

On Sunday, the health secretary accused the pharmaceutical companies of being “narrow -minded ve and undermining their relations with the government after two sides could not reach an agreement last week.

Streeting, the industrial group in the next three years on how to limit the government proposals on how to limit the revenues on Friday, the British Pharmaceutical Industry (EU) Association (ABPI) was distant from negotiations.

The dispute focuses on a voluntary plan in which NHS determines the budget for branded drugs and agrees to repay the revenues that companies go beyond this amount.

The program is designed to prevent the costs of health service from control, but in recent months it has been examined after proven that pharmaceutical companies are more expensive than they expected.

The lack of agreement leaves the government as one of the eight high growth industries at the center of its industrial plans, as the government has begun a 10 -year NHS plan to reshape NHS with drug producers.

Streeting said: “Pharmaceutical industry [pricing] Coping with the previous government. When the industry became more expensive than expected, we offered an unprecedented proposal to reduce payment rates for all the future years of the plan and accelerate the growth in the sector – but the ABPI did not reach an agreement.

“This tightly met and weakens our efforts to work in cooperation.”

“I will not allow Big Pharma to dismantle our patients or taxpayers. A great British success story of life sciences. NHS is not only not from the revolution in life sciences and medical technology.

ABPI refrained from commenting. CEO Richard Torbett said on Friday: “We need to reach a solution that improves access to future innovation, allowing the sector to fulfill the growth potential and does not require the industry to pay about three times more than necessary in other European countries.”

The schema, which was initiated in 2023, places a limit on how much NHS can increase its expenditures every year. Companies then reduce their revenues on this border.

When it first agreed, the government estimates that pharmaceutical companies will face 15% discount this year. However, NHS spent more than expected in such drugs and faced the discount rate of the industry.

The streeting proposed a series of changes in the plan that would make 1 billion pounds cheaper in the next three years. Drug companies estimate that savings were dwarf with the amount they had to return to the government at that time and that it was about £ 13.5 billion.

The ministers warned that they would have to move their drug trials and work out of England unless they committed to spend more of their NHS budget on drugs.

British Astrazeneca President Tom Keith-Roach said England is “in the long-term race at the bottom”. “As a life science investor, it is difficult for me to defend Britain as a target for new R) or production or clinical research.”

Novartis UK President Johan Kahlström said that as a result of discounts, it is very difficult for the global board rooms to justify investments in the UK ”.

Drug firms and streeting, National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), in the way of judging whether new drugs are worth confirmation for NHS.

The regulator typically confirms drugs that cost £ 20,000-30,000 for each additional year they add to a patient. Considering the latest inflation in the cost of state -of -the -art drugs, drug companies say it is very low and some of them warn that some of them will not start their newest products in the UK.

Gilead Sciences He said this weekend He would not present the latest breast cancer drug for evaluation by Nice, saying that he could not make enough profit from him.

Streeting said: “The last workers’ government was established by the government to make a better agreement for patients and taxpayers. The process balances the cost of a treatment against the effectiveness of a treatment. Any pharmaceutical company that offers drugs should be comfortable from this route.”