Mounjaro maker wants NHS drug price rises in return for more investment in UK | Pharmaceuticals industry
The US pharmaceutical group behind the Mounjaro weight-loss drug said it would continue its investments in Britain if ministers agreed to regularly increase NHS drug prices and end the discount scheme.
Patrik Jonsson, head of Eli Lilly’s international business, said the company was in talks with ministers in Britain and was optimistic a deal could be reached this summer on Britain paying more for its medicines.
The talks will also consider “innovative” pricing plans for anti-obesity drugs, such as tying payments to whether the treatment helps patients return to work, he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
It comes as the US pharmaceutical industry increases pressure on the UK, with Keir Starmer last year agreeing to the first increase in NHS cost-effectiveness thresholds in 27 years. This increased the price the NHS will pay for potentially life-extending drugs from £20,000 to £30,000 a year, from £25,000 to £35,000 for each year of life gained.
Eli Lilly was one of several pharmaceutical companies that abandoned or halted around £25bn of planned investments in the UK last year. The drug developer has paused plans to invest in laboratory space in central London.
Jonsson told the FT that the resumption of Eli Lilly’s investment would depend on the outcome of talks with the government.
“What we need to see is actually these goals turning into a really well-defined plan of action with interventions and timelines,” he said.
He added that drug prices in the UK “have been too low for too long and even with the current threshold we are not back to where we started over 20 years ago”.
He said: “The threshold cannot be written in stone for another thirty years.”
Following pressure from Donald Trump on international drug pricing, the UK has agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines by 2035 as part of a US-UK drug pricing deal. Campaigners said the funds would come out of the NHS budget rather than the Treasury and could eventually reach £9bn a year.
Big pharmaceutical companies have also protested a “rebate” scheme under which they are required to repay some of the revenue from the sale of branded drugs if the amount used by the public health service is higher than the agreed rate.
That figure is expected to fall in 2026, but Jonsson said payments “should actually drop to zero” over time.
He added that the NHS had rationed access to the Mounjaro injection but the company was “very keen to look at more innovative deals”. A pill version of the weight-loss drug is expected to launch later this year.
“We have already seen some data [on] “How intervening and treating obesity actually reduces absenteeism… for an employer that makes a huge difference,” he said, “We have a population of 2.8 million eligible workers in the UK who are absent from work due to illness. “I think there are real opportunities to discuss new models, to work together, and this includes results-oriented agreement.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Everyone deserves access to the best and most innovative treatments and the changes we are making to medicine pricing will give thousands of NHS patients access to new treatments faster.
“We remain fully committed to delivering the UK-US medicines deal, including changes to the Nice cost-effectiveness threshold.”
