{"id":116116,"date":"2025-09-05T10:21:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116116\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T10:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:21:23","slug":"if-we-pay-more-for-drugs-hospitals-will-take-the-hit-says-nice-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116116\/","title":{"rendered":"If we pay more for drugs, hospitals will take the hit, says Nice chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pharmaceutical companies\u2019 demands for higher spending on drugs would strip funding from NHS hospitals for staff and operations, the head of Britain\u2019s medicines watchdog has warned.<\/p>\n

Dr Sam Roberts, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which decides what drugs are made available on the NHS, spoke out amid an increasingly bitter row between ministers and global drug firms over pricing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAssuming that the budget for the NHS doesn\u2019t increase, any increase in medicines prices would mean savings would have to be found elsewhere. So that would mean other things would need to be cut back such as on A&Es, fewer nurses, fewer hip replacements,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Negotiations between Wes Streeting and the industry broke down<\/a> earlier this month and the health secretary walked away from talks about the rate that companies pay in a \u201cclawback\u201d tax.<\/p>\n

Under the current deal, drug companies pay a percentage of their income from NHS sales back to the taxpayer, the aim being to prevent the health service\u2019s costs from spiralling. Ministers have undertaken a review of the levy in recent months after it rose unexpectedly to 23 per cent this year \u2014 far more than the 15 per cent predicted. The levy has been labelled \u201cuncompetitive and punitive\u201d by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).<\/p>\n

Streeting has said he won\u2019t let drug companies \u201crip off\u201d the taxpayer and the government would not be a \u201cpushover\u201d.<\/p>\n

Firms have threatened to withhold drugs if ministers do not commit to spending more. The health service in England spends about 9 per cent of its budget on drugs \u2014 equivalent to about \u00a319 billion a year \u2014 lower than many European countries including France and Germany.<\/p>\n

The industry wants Nice to approve more expensive drugs, the NHS to spend more of its overall budget on medicines and the clawback rate to be lowered to make investing in the UK more profitable. The government had offered to increase spending \u2014 but not until 2029; the benefits would take a decade to be realised by the drug companies.<\/p>\n

\u2022 British cancer patients will suffer \u2018unless NHS pays more for drugs\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Roberts, 51, who will step down from Nice after four years in December, said the decision to spend more was one for the government. But, speaking for the first time since the row began, she added: \u201cWe have a finite tax-funded system, so we need to make sure that every pound spent is spent as wisely as possible. Of the things that come to Nice, we\u2019re saying yes to 91 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Horber, the international president of Novartis, one of the the largest drug companies in Europe, warned the UK was \u201cat a point of no return\u201d and would lose out on drugs, jobs and new research if it didn\u2019t spend more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to get the value for what we bring to society,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to invest where we see a recognition of the work we do. We will have to make clear calls on where we launch [drugs] first. It may mean that patients will get later access to innovation, or maybe they don\u2019t get access.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, Nice rejected a new Novartis prostate cancer drug, Pluvicto, on cost grounds. The treatment was shown to double to 12 months the average patient\u2019s survival without their cancer progressing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should we invest in the United Kingdom into any manufacturing site for [this class of drugs]. There is no reason,\u201d Horber said.<\/p>\n

Last week, the American drug giant Gilead Sciences said it would not submit a new breast cancer drug for Nice approval because it couldn\u2019t make enough profit in the UK.<\/p>\n

Roberts said it was \u201cabsolutely heartbreaking\u201d to refuse drugs that extended patients\u2019 lives or cured them entirely, adding: \u201cI\u2019ll actually get teary eyed just thinking about some of the awful decisions we have to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s no alternative. You\u2019re making a decision that will affect that patient and that family for ever. But if you didn\u2019t make those hard decisions, you would also be affecting all those people you can\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nice has faced criticism for the price thresholds it uses to assess whether a specific drug is value for money for the taxpayer. It judges this by calculating how much more it costs to achieve one extra quality year of life compared with existing treatments. If a drug exceeds a cost of between \u00a320,000 to \u00a330,000, it is judged too expensive.<\/p>\n

But Horber said it was now time for a change of approach from the government: \u201cIf I look into how all of a sudden countries are able to invest into defence; if you want to invest into something which you believe is important for your society, then you find the budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe UK is currently investing around 9 per cent of their entire NHS budget in medicines. That\u2019s half of what Germany is investing. Why? It\u2019s a question of priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts said over the past five years, on average, only about six drugs a year were launched in Europe but not in the UK. President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on drug companies and force them to lower their prices, which are much higher in the US than in the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

The US spends vastly more on drugs than the rest of the world. The UK drug firm AstraZeneca<\/a> said it expects 50 per cent of its revenue to come from the US by 2030 \u2014 equal to $40 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US market exerts significant pressure due to its profitability,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cThere is a risk that the changes in US pharmaceutical pricing could affect the willingness of companies to launch in all European markets, including the UK. Now, that\u2019s not something we\u2019ve seen yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the UK had gone too far in holding down drug prices, she said: \u201cWe do spend less in total on medicines and our rebate percentage is higher. I would caution comparing things exactly to other markets because it\u2019s not exactly like for like, but I can understand the frustration that that causes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nice\u2019s workload has dramatically increased from about 40 drugs a year in 2018 to more than 100 annually. But it has faced criticism for being too slow and bureaucratic.<\/p>\n

Roberts, who lives in Richmond, west London, with her husband and three children, acknowledged that every day a drug is not approved by Nice \u201cis a day that a patient waits\u201d for treatment. \u201cSo we take very seriously the time it takes us to make decisions,\u201d she said, pointing to a 25 per cent cut in the time taken to reach a decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pharmaceutical companies\u2019 demands for higher spending on drugs would strip funding from NHS hospitals for staff and operations,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-116116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}