29 July 2016 - Roche, Pfizer concerned new system has no spending limit.

England is reopening its Cancer Drugs Fund with a crafty solution to rein in the overspending that blighted its predecessor: make drugmakers pay.

Under new rules, if the fund exceeds its 340 million-pound ($450 million) budget -- as it’s done in the past, overshooting by 37 percent in the final year before the revamp -- pharmaceutical companies will pick up the tab. And there’s no cap on that bill.

The reformed fund opened for new applications Friday after a four-month shutdown. Like its forerunner, it’s meant to pay for therapies that aren’t deemed cost-effective enough for routine use across England, where cancer survival rates lag those of other developed countries. But with new rules devised to protect the National Health Service’s strained finances, it’s treading a fine line between holding pharma companies accountable and alienating them.

The new system “feels to me extremely high risk and not particularly effective,” David Montgomery, cancer medical director for Pfizer Inc.’s U.K. unit, said in an interview. That’s because it could amount to an “uncontrolled price cut on top of what will already be good value for money.”

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