Pharma's contribution to UK NHS medicines bill hits £1 billion

9 March 2016

The pharma industry has paid the UK’s Department of Health more than £1 billion ($1.42 billion) towards the cost of new medicines, figures published on Wednesday by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) show.

These contributions are part of the voluntary Pharmaceutical Payment Regulation Scheme (PPRS), which is intended to help make the latest treatment affordable for National Health Service (NHS) patients and give them the same level of access to new medicines as those in other European Union countries.

The ABPI figures also reveal that the NHS spend on branded medicines under the PPRS had barely changed from 2014/15 to 2015/16, having gone up by less than 0.5%.

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