UK NHS to reform drug costing mechanism, with onus on doctors

Under plans to be announced later this week, Andrew Lansley, UK Secretary of State for Health, will announce details of a new mechanism for deciding how much the National Health Service will pay for costly new drugs, which puts the onus on doctors to decide whether they are affordable.

As previously indicated, the plans - due to come not effect in 2014 - will remove the ability of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to decide whether the NHS should adopt drugs or not (The Pharma Letter November 2).

The Financial Times yesterday focused on this issue yesterday, saying that the onus will then fall on physicians to decide whether new drugs are affordable. However, the government also plans to negotiate the price of medicines with pharmaceutical companies under a system of value-based pricing (VBP), already used by health authorities in Australia and Canada, in which fees are negotiated with companies on the basis of a scientific assessment of the drug's clinical value. For its part, the NICE will continue to conduct initial cost effectiveness studies on new drugs intended for NHS use.