Why does the NHS (the customer) feel they have to pay more for drugs? It is usually the company who decides on the price they charge - but apparently not when industrial investments are involved!
The UK's science minister, Patrick Vallance, has said that "The price the NHS pays for medicines will need to rise to stop a wave of pharmaceutical investment leaving the UK".
This was reported last week in a BBC article. Lord Vallance continues by saying that “low prices for new drugs, a lack of government investment, and tariff pressure from US President Donald Trump, have been pushing firms away from the UK”. As a result he told the BBC that “price increases are going to be a necessary part” of solving that problem - even though he did not know where the additional money, for a cash-strapped government, and a ‘broken’ NHS, would come from to pay for higher prices. That, he said, was something the Department of Health would have to work out alongside the Treasury!
So raising the price of pharmaceutical drugs is not a health issue. It is purely a financial matter because industrial investment in Britain by drug companies is at stake.
“According to the government, Moderna is investing more than a £1bn in UK research and development as part of a 10-year partnership to create new treatments jobs and boost pandemic resilience”.
But Merck has recently decided scrap a £1bn investment in the UK; AstraZeneca is ‘pausing’ a £200m investment in Cambridge; and Novartis has warned that NHS patients will lose access to “new cutting-edge treatments because of skyrocketing costs” so it was not considering the UK for any major new investments in manufacturing, research, or advanced technology because of “systemic barriers”. In addition the article states that Eli Lilly has told the Financial Times that the UK was “probably the worst country in Europe” for drug prices.
So a rise in drug prices is not necessary because of the industry’s rising costs; or an increased demand for the industry’s products; or their value and worth to patients. They are the result of industry threats to withdraw pharmaceutical investment! In terms of the principles of capitalism this is not how the pricing mechanism should work (except, perhaps, that every industry is supposed to seek to maximise its profits).
What the Science Minister seems to have forgotten, it would appear, is that there are other factors involved in the investment decisions of the pharmaceutical companies at this moment in time - facctors that have never been raised by the BBC, or as far as I am aware, any other mainstream media platform.
Why would any industry invest, in the UK or anywhere else, when its business prospects face such a very serious threat?
Since the debacle of the Covid-19 pandemic there has been growing cynicism about the efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs, especially “safe and effective” vaccines. More patients are becoming “drug-hesitant“. Apparently the NHS budget for drugs has gone from 14% to 9% of its total spending. Even doctors are now extolling the virtue of ‘social’ or ‘environmental’ prescribing. Drugs, even vaccines, are not as ‘fashionable’ as they were.
So even Big Pharma’s biggest customer in Britain, by far, the NHS, is questioning the safety of effectiveness of its drugs and vaccines. The investment withdrawal decisions mentioned in the BBC article were taken by pharmaceutical companies at a time when they had every right to believe that demand for their drugs and vaccines would make any new investment less profitable than they previously thought.
The situation is likely to get worse. The USA government is now forcefully questioning the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. It is removing vaccine mandates. It is questioning whether all vaccines are necessary. It is stating that any new drugs and vaccines will be approved by the Drug Regulator only if and when their safety and effectiveness can be proven by honest medical science.
And Big Pharma must know that it is going to be extremely hard for them to provide this proof, following decades of ‘buying’ and ‘owning’ the science, manipulating the raw data so that it can reach conclusions that the data does not support, denying independent statisticians from examining the raw data, and then getting the ‘science’ rubber stamped by a Federal Drug Regulator (the FDA), and organisation that has been infiltrated by pharmaceutical place men and women.
Potentially this can undermine the entire business plan of the pharmaceutical industry. Future prospects for drug and vaccine sales must have plummeted. So might this not be why drug companies are withdrawing their UK investments?
Donald Trump, with all his many faults, appears to realise this. It is reported that he has made a drug price agreement with Pfizer - which both lowers drug prices and gains a $70 billion investment in the USA. Perhaps he is a politician who understands economics better than Lord Vallance; or perhaps they justnhave different vested interests.
Drug companies have been hugely profitable throughout the last 100 years. They have used their accumulated wealth to lobby (bribe?) politicians and governments; and they have invested heavily in the mainstream media to ensure that they (and their products) receive a good press (and free advertising). All this ‘influence’ is now in serious danger - at least in the USA. The pharmaceutical industry has been largely unchallenged since the Thalidomide debacle of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which resulted in the establishment of stronger drug regulation (that is, a regulatory system, designed to protect patients from dangerous drugs), but one that Big Pharma has successfully undermined in the last 20-30 years).
For all these reasons, the future of pharmaceuticals must now be in serious doubt - to the extent that current investment plans will need to be revised in line with reduced profit expectations.
Lord Vallance, and perhaps the entire UK government, may not yet understand how events in the USA may affect the pharmaceutical industry. So it is seeking to persuade drug companies to continue their investment decisions by voluntarily offering and increase in what they are prepared to pay for their failing drugs and vaccines. Dare I suggest that it seems that drug companies are using their investment decisions as a blackmail strategy; and that faced with this powerful blackmailer the government is willing to pay ransom money?
Why should this be? Perhaps the BBC article provides a clue.
Vallance is a pharmaceutical man! He has the interests of the drug industry at heart. He spent years promoting the Covid-19 vaccines of AstraZeneca (a vaccine that had to be withdrawn because of the patient harm it caused). Now he is encouraging drug companies to invest in the UK - at the taxpayers expence.
Damn the patients who are being harmed by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines!
Damn the taxpayer who will have to pay for his generous largesse!
It’s the industry, and its future in Britain that seems to be important, and it’s ability to invest heavily in the country must be maintained, literally at any cost.
Recently, and in the same vein, I reported that Eli Lily was to increase the price of Mounjaro (its weight-loss drug) by 170%. I asked whether any industry, other than Big Pharma, would get away with doing this? To date there appears to have been little resistance to this extortionate price-hyke, and this raises similar questions about who determines the price of pharmaceutical drugs.
The questions Lord Vallance, and the UK government, should be asking is this:
Are the big drug companies likely to be investing anywhere?
And therefore is it really necessary to pay higher prices for drugs?
