The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7493 p299
15 March 2008

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PPRS renegotiation used as reason to limit comment on Health Select Committee report

Renegotiation of the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme is being used by the Government as a reason for not commenting on a Parliamentary recommendation that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence should assess all new medicines for cost-effectiveness when they are launched. The recommendation was made in a House of Commons Health Select Committee report earlier this year (PJ, 5/12 January 2008, p4).

The Government’s response to the report, published last week, says that the PPRS is currently being renegotiated and that it cannot comment on the recommendation because the renegotiation might be relevant to NICE’s appraisal process.
The PPRS is being renegotiated as a result of an Office of Fair Trading investigation. One of the OFT’s recommendations was that all new drugs should be appraised for clinical and cost-effectiveness (PJ, 24 February 2007, p208).

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has welcomed the Government’s response. “The price paid for a medicine or any other treatment has to be seen in the context of the overall value it brings — including benefits, such as savings in hospital care and social services as well as quality of life improvements for patients,” said ABPI commercial director David Fisher.

“NICE’s decisions have been made on far too narrow a basis, with the result that many innovative medicines have not been made available to all patients who could benefit from them. We shall eagerly participate in these discussions with the aim of putting that right.”

Commenting on the select committee’s recommendation that an independent body should determine a cost-effectiveness threshold to be used by NICE when assessing treatment, the Government says that the potential benefits, such as greater independence and wider debate, do not outweigh the disadvantages.

Besides which, the Government says, the evidence on quality adjusted life years available to any separate body would be no better than that available to NICE.