U.K. Health Secretary Asked Drugmakers to Accept Lower Prices - Bloomberg

U.K. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told drug industry representatives that the prices of new medicines would be lower than companies wanted at a meeting weeks after the coalition government took power.

Lansley, a Conservative, “thought it inevitable that there would be some prices the industry therefore wouldn’t like,” according to the minutes of a June 7 meeting with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. Bloomberg News obtained the minutes through a U.K. Freedom of Information Act request. Drugmakers would have to acknowledge that some drugs “had not been made available at a ‘fair’ price.”

The meeting shows the government, which came to power after a May 6 election, is targeting health-care costs as it attempts to close the 156 billion-pound ($250 billion) gap in the overall U.K. budget. Spending on wages and medicines by the state-run medical system, the National Health Service, will be reduced to meet the government’s goal of saving 20 billion pounds over the next four years, said Alan Maynard, a health economist at the University of York in England.

via bloomberg.com

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