{"id":85128,"date":"2025-10-16T20:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/85128\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T20:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:49:10","slug":"dont-give-in-to-big-pharma-on-drug-pricing-pharmaceuticals-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/85128\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t give in to big pharma on drug pricing | Pharmaceuticals industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the chief executive of Eli Lilly may lament the UK\u2019s drug prices (UK is \u2018worst country in Europe\u2019 for drug prices, says Mounjaro maker, 24 September<\/a>), the NHS should celebrate them. The system put in place for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new drugs is respected the world over and is successful in applying the principle that funding a new product should not damage the NHS as a whole. This principle of cost-effectiveness has led to widespread price reductions for the NHS that have allowed the service as a whole to benefit.<\/p>\n

The chief executive of Eli Lilly links the recent pausing or cancelling of pharmaceutical industry investments in the UK to drug pricing here, when these are down to\u00a0the drug companies\u2019 desperation to kowtow to Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Further to this, the talk of increasing Nice\u2019s cost-effectiveness threshold, and even index-linking this, is a disgrace (NHS could pay 25% more for medicines under plan to end row with drugmakers and Trump, 8 October<\/a>). The threshold is not a price that we should increase every year; it is a measure of opportunity cost. It measures what health improvements in the wider NHS we miss out on when we invest more in a new service or drug. If a new drug doesn\u2019t generate more \u201chealth\u201d than that which it displaces, the NHS as a whole is worse off. The rate of displacement\u00a0doesn\u2019t directly\u00a0change with inflation. Linking the two is nonsense.
Simon Dixon
Former professor of health economics, University of Sheffield<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the chief executive of Eli Lilly may lament the UK\u2019s drug prices (UK is \u2018worst country in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-85128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}