Lansley Health Secretary in UK coalition government

pharmafile | May 12, 2010 | News story | Sales and Marketing election, general election, government, pricing, value 

The UK has its first coalition government for 65 years after Labour leader Gordon Brown unexpectedly resigned as prime minister last night.

Labour came second to the Conservatives in last week’s general election, but the winning party lacked enough seats for an overall Commons majority, resulting in a hung parliament.

Brown stepped down after the Conservatives under David Cameron finalised a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats.

Cameron will be the new Prime Minister and a number of senior Liberal Democrats will join the government, including party leader Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister.

Ministerial roles are still being allocated, but the post of Health Secretary has gone to Tory MP Andrew Lansley, who will take responsibility for the NHS and pharma.

A key pharma reform in the Tory’s election campaign was the introduction of value-based pricing and, now the party is the majority partner in the coalition, pilots of the system are likely to start soon.

Value-based pricing

Speaking exclusively to Pharmafocus before the election the new Health Secretary laid out the benefits of value-based pricing (VBP), which would set drug prices according to the value medicines provide and would mean NICE no longer sets cost-effectiveness thresholds.

“This would be a much more rational system than the patient access schemes which are haphazard and random,” Lansley said.

He added that pharma companies would be invited to take part in pilot studies of VBP soon after the election to explore how the system would work best.

Lansely said he wanted a VBP system to be in place by 2014, the same year in which the current PPRS pricing agreement is set to expire.

UK industry body the ABPI said it has been looking into the issue “deeply” and, though careful not to dismiss the idea, said VBP remains fraught with difficulty for pharma.

The body told Pharmafocus before the election that it “strongly supports the principle” that pharma should be should be accountable for demonstrating the value of its medicines, but said a “number of key issues would need to be resolved before the UK could introduce a ‘VBP’ system, particularly one that sets prices at launch”, known as ‘x-ante’ value-based pricing.

The industry body said such a scheme would be dependent on reforming the current appraisal methods used by NICE.

“We believe there would need to be a fundamental change to NICE’s remit on how it should value medicines,” said the ABPI. “This could be achieved via the creation of a steering committee comprising representatives from the pharmaceutical industry and NICE to promote dialogue and understanding between the two.

Finally, it insisted that any such changes must not occur before 2014, when the current PPRS pricing agreement is due to expire.

“Any new system should build on and develop the positive elements of the existing PPRS, which must be allowed to run its course to 2014,” the ABPI concluded.

Spending cuts and policy challenges

In their health manifesto, the Conservatives said they wanted to create an independent NHS board to run the health service. This would run contrary to Lib Dem plans for a more co-operative-based system that puts power into the hands of local people via directly-elected health boards.

When it comes to the NHS, the Conservatives were the only party to promise to increase the NHS budget above inflation, but this rise would still be negligible given the size of the current deficit.

The new Chancellor George Osborne announced today that he intends to make £6 billion spending cuts “within 50 days”. It remains to be seen if any of these cuts will come from the NHS budget.

Ben Adams

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