UK To Keep Special Cancer Drug Fund As Battle Over NICE Rages
The pharmaceutical industry has won a victory in the UK, where the government has decided to renew more than $300 million in special funding for a controversial program that is used to pay for pricey cancer medicines that NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, has decided offer insufficient value for reimbursement.
The Cancer Drugs Fund, which was created three years ago and is set to expire early next year, emerged after sustained criticism from drugmakers and the media that NICE rejected too many medicines for coverage by the UK National Health Service and, as a result, denied patients needed treatments. This occurred as part of a wider debate over rising prices for newer medicines, especially cancer drugs.
And so, the fund was designed as a temporary measure while a new value-based pricing scheme went into effect, according to Pharmafile. But the decision by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to extend the fund suggests the value-based plan has not succeeded in widening patient access. As a results, several drugmkaers have reportedly have lobbied the government to maintain the fund.
“We feel that NICE’s methods need to be reformed to better take into account the nature of cancer and the way it can be treated,” Katy Munns, who heads government affairs at Sanofi (SNY), tells Pharmafile. “It is hard to see how the CDF can be withdrawn if VBP simply inherits the existing process... The inequality in access (to medicines) is stark and depressing.”
The backdrop is an ongoing debate over the best uses for government resources to improve public health. While drugmakers have complained about the thresholds set by NICE, there have been growing complaints over prices. In an editorial three years ago,, The Lancet published an editorial three years ago lambasting the new fund as a “product of political opportunism and intellectual incoherence.”
The fund “not only undermines NICE, it undermines the entire concept of a rational and evidence-based approach to the allocation of finite health-care resources,” the journal wrote. Instead, The Lancet suggested more drugmakers consider offering rebates to induce government reimbursement and pointed to an example begun by Johnson & Johnson for its Velcade treatment (see this).
STORY ENDS HERE
The Cancer Drugs Fund, which was created three years ago and is set to expire early next year, emerged after sustained criticism from drugmakers and the media that NICE rejected too many medicines for coverage by the UK National Health Service and, as a result, denied patients needed treatments. This occurred as part of a wider debate over rising prices for newer medicines, especially cancer drugs.
And so, the fund was designed as a temporary measure while a new value-based pricing scheme went into effect, according to Pharmafile. But the decision by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to extend the fund suggests the value-based plan has not succeeded in widening patient access. As a results, several drugmkaers have reportedly have lobbied the government to maintain the fund.
“We feel that NICE’s methods need to be reformed to better take into account the nature of cancer and the way it can be treated,” Katy Munns, who heads government affairs at Sanofi (SNY), tells Pharmafile. “It is hard to see how the CDF can be withdrawn if VBP simply inherits the existing process... The inequality in access (to medicines) is stark and depressing.”
The backdrop is an ongoing debate over the best uses for government resources to improve public health. While drugmakers have complained about the thresholds set by NICE, there have been growing complaints over prices. In an editorial three years ago,, The Lancet published an editorial three years ago lambasting the new fund as a “product of political opportunism and intellectual incoherence.”
The fund “not only undermines NICE, it undermines the entire concept of a rational and evidence-based approach to the allocation of finite health-care resources,” the journal wrote. Instead, The Lancet suggested more drugmakers consider offering rebates to induce government reimbursement and pointed to an example begun by Johnson & Johnson for its Velcade treatment (see this).
STORY ENDS HERE
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