European cooperation could help to lower drug prices

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1584

Published 10 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1584
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1584

Letters

Drug pricing scheme

European cooperation could help to lower drug prices

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)acknowledges that thought should be given not only to a drug’seffectiveness and quality adjusted life year (QALY) value butalso to ways to influence the drug’s cost.¹ But in a free,efficient market, which the UK government is encouraging forhealthcare purchasers and providers, it must be for individualpharmaceutical companies to decide whether it makes commercialsense to sell a drug to the NHS at a price that allows it tomeet the particular cost per QALY thresholds that NICE applies.

The NHS in England and Wales, which is responsible for deliveringon decisions that NICE makes, is but one of many drug purchasersworldwide. A more effective way to counterbalance the marketpower of the "drugs giants" to set prices would be to have muchgreater cooperation and agreement across the European Unionon drug purchasing decisions. An . . . [Full text of this article]

Timothy D Heymann, reader in health management¹

¹ Business School, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ

t.heymann@imperial.ac.uk