Is that a good thing, though? For example, HIV medication Tenofovir/Emtricitabine (branded Truvada) is still patented in the US and costs about $2000 for a month's course. Meanwhile, generics with the same active ingredients cost about £20 a month in the UK. I'm concerned that US organisations will try to bring with them an exclusive use of those expensive, still US patented drugs, vastly increasing the costs to the NHS and the taxpayer and the money going straight to the US pharmaceutical giants. Or worse still, that a trade deal will outlaw the import of the generics, leaving the expensive US patented drugs as the only option.
Disclosure here: I'm a user of PrEP (supplied and monitored by the NHS, or at least Virgincare on their behalf) which is where you take Truvada to provide almost 100% immunity to HIV, rather than as a treatment once you're infected. NHS England has been dragging its heels for years, stretching out a 'trial' that basically limited access to the drug, and kept it from many people in the risk groups that would benefit from it. They've finally agreed that the benefits in preventing the spread of HIV outweigh the costs, but if the drug ends up costing nearly 100 times as much as it does now, they will almost certainly have to start rationing it again.
Nicole T - I'm not going to comment on whether the NHS is under threat of sell-off, but will comment that the NHS's pharmaceutical negotiations have not always yielded good deals.
One such example would be Liotyronine. The NHS pays £9 per
tablet for 20mcgr Liothyronine. The NHS only buys one strength of Liothyronine, so anyone being prescribed it, as eye-watering costs, will be investing in a pill cutting device, unless they are taking 20mcgr, or multiples thereof, per day I could buy it, over the counter, from a reputable pharmacy, overseas, for the equivalent of £70 for 150 tablets, each containing 25mcgr.
My Liothyronie costs the NHS £504 per month. (28 x 18, as I take 40mcgr a day).
Many, many people, in UK, are simply refused Liothyronine, on the basis of cost, and abandoned to survive on the much cheaper Levothyroxine, which for some, like me, just doesn't cut the mustard.
Our NHS is a wonderful thing, and I am grateful for it every day, but aspects of it are significantly boring. Whoever thought the Liothyronine deal was commercially acceptable needs to be shot, or deployed in another, more benign, role.
