Posted by Michael Wonder on 30 Jul 2016
High cost of new drugs
27 July 2016 - Why government must negotiate a better deal for publicly funded research.
The investigation by The BMJ and Cambridge and Bath universities into the availability of breakthrough hepatitis C drugs raises important questions for NHS England about access to lifesaving drugs. However, the main question is why medicines are so expensive in the first place. The pricing strategy of Gilead for sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) and ledipasvir-sofosbuvir (Harvoni) raises questions that go well beyond the UK.
The BMJ’s investigation is just an example of a more general problem. What is the right price to pay for a particular drug, and how should this be determined?
