Professor Sir Michael Rawlins has received a special exemption – again – to continue to serve as chairman of the U.K.'s costs regulator, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
In ordinary circumstances, appointments to chair U.K. public bodies, like NICE, last for a maximum of 10 years.
Portugal's medicines pricing authority, Infarmed, has created a series of reference price groups for Pfizer's atorvastatin now that the lipid lowerer has generic competition in the country; the new prices will come into effect April 1.
The U.K.'s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) will likely no longer have any role in drug cost-effectiveness decisions after 2013, according to officials.
Instead, a new value-based pricing system will set drug prices to reflect a product's value at the outset, without the need for NICE to carry out its assessment once a drug already is available.
France is proposing to save €500 million ($700 million) from its drugs bill next year, and to end tax breaks for companies that market high-selling orphan drugs, according to its draft 2011 budget.
A sharp rise in Germany's expenditure on pharmaceuticals in the first half of 2010 has left drug companies once again feeling vulnerable to government intervention on drug prices.
The Irish government is cutting prices of generic products by up to 40%, thereby complementing similar cuts it made in branded off-patent drug prices earlier this year. The government also confirmed that it was still planning to introduce reference pricing and generic substitution next year.
The Portuguese government intends to cut medicine prices by 6% from Oct. 1. Beginning early next year, it also wants to adopt mandatory electronic prescribing and dispensing and to change the way it calculates reference prices.
A storm is brewing in Germany over proposals from the federal government that could see members of private health insurance funds pay the same price for prescription medicines as those covered by statutory health insurance funds.
A note of caution to drug firms: changing early payment discounts for wholesalers may result in late delivery of products. That's the contention of diabetes drug specialist manufacturer Novo Nordisk, whose German subsidiary (novo Nordisk Deutschland) is considering bringing legal proceedings against a number of wholesalers following a series of allegations that it is unable to ensure a reliable supply of its products.
