|
 The stand-off shows how the price of medicines is as pressing and
emotive an issue in Europe as in the United States, where Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has promised to clamp down on
alleged profiteering by the drug industry.
Britain's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
said on Tuesday that the price of Roche's Kadcyla remained too high
to justify its use on the state-run National Health Service (NHS).
Kadcyla has become a test case for drug access in Europe, where NICE
has taken a lead in assessing the cost-effectiveness of new
medicines by weighing the benefits they offer against a standard
benchmark.
Two weeks ago Kadcyla was included in the Cancer Drugs Fund that
covers drugs not routinely paid for by the NHS, after Roche offered
a significant discount.
NICE, however, said it had been offered a different, smaller
discount by the company and, as a result, Kadcyla was not deemed
cost-effective for routine, long-term use.
Kadcyla costs about 90,000 pounds ($137,000) per patient at its full
list price, according to NICE. Roche contends the cost is actually
somewhat less because the drug is typically given for shorter
periods than NICE assumes.
Roche CEO Severin Schwan, who slammed Britain's cancer drug system
as "stupid" two months ago, expressed frustration at the rigid
system used in Britain to determine value for money in healthcare.
"I fundamentally believe there is no objective answer to value of
life," he told an FT pharmaceutical conference, noting that drugs
spending in Europe accounted for only around 1 percent of gross
domestic product.
Industry critics, however, argue that medicine prices are rising far
faster than inflation, especially in cancer treatment, and returns
demanded by the industry on newly launched products are
unsustainable.
[to top of second column] |
"There is no blank cheque big enough to solve this problem," said
Karl Claxton, professor of health economics at the University of
York, who helped develop some of the economic modeling used by NICE.
The pharmaceutical industry frequently points to rising research
costs to justify high drug prices but Claxton said this was
wrong-headed.
"It is exactly the other way round," he told the conference. "It is
the price that people are willing to pay that determines how much
you are willing to invest in marginal investments. That's the way
capital markets work."
Global new drug launches hit a 17-year high of 46 last year, up from
29 in 2013, and the high pace of approvals has continued in 2015.
But getting these products prescribed to large groups of patients is
a challenge on both sides of the Atlantic.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
