Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has promised to crack down on Primary Care Trusts that refuse to buy certain drugs because of their cost, despite the drugs’ approval by NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). In what is known as the post code lottery, whilst some PCTs buy patented drugs, others obtain the much cheaper nearest equivalent produced by generics suppliers. This can result in significant savings, but loss of benefit for patients. For example, in 2010, anyone buying simvastatin instead of Pfizer’s lipitor would pay £2 instead of £26. Mr Lansley has said that he will establish an effective compliance regime so that if drugs are approved by NICE then they will be automatically included on drugs lists rather than banned.
How the plans will work in practice is unclear, especially given that the Government’s plans involve handing down more power for control of budgets locally, as the medical practitioner has been held out as having better expertise to decide what to spend the medical budget on.
Paul Gershlick, a Partner and Head of Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP, comments: “Something that may soon alleviate the unfairness of the postcode lottery is the Patent Cliff – under which many blockbusting drugs are about to come off patent and be open to competition by much cheaper generic equivalents. Lipitor, for example, has already recently come off patent.”