Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13612

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Collier J.
An end in sight for the secretive drug price fixing pact between government and industry
BMJ Blogs 2008 May 6;
http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2008/05/06/joe-collier-an-end-in-sight-for-the-secretive-drug-price-fixing-pact-between-government-and-industry/

Abstract:

By September this year it is almost certain that a new system will be in place for determining how much the NHS will pay for its brand name medicines. For over half a century government and industry have used a complex formula to calculate the overall returns drug companies can make on their sales to the NHS.

By dint of the formula companies have fixed drug launch prices at whatever figure they have felt appropriate. Prices were not based on a drug’s clinical value, nor on the cost of the product’s development, rather they were related to a company’s historical capital (for example, how much they had tied up in plant or machinery) with allowances for promotion, research and innovation (none of which were critically checked)…

Notes:

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