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Nicola Perrin, Chief Executive, Association of Medical Research Charities, said:
“For our member charities, the worst possible scenario is having a discovery stuck in the lab, or a treatment available in other countries but not through the NHS. We therefore welcome today’s announcement and the progress that has been made since last December. This reinforces the Government’s commitment to making the UK one of the best places in the world to develop new treatments. It will also help to ensure that patients can access new medicines as quickly as possible.”
Dr James Lomas, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of York, said:
“The government presents this partnership as a clear win for patients and the economy. But the basic arithmetic raises immediate questions. While UK pharmaceutical exports to the US may be worth around £5bn per year, the deal commits the UK to increasing spending on innovative medicines by a further 0.3% of GDP — reaching over £9bn annually by the end of the decade.
“This is not only new access to medicines that would otherwise be unavailable. In most cases, these are treatments the NHS would have funded anyway — but at higher prices.
“Crucially, the press release ignores what this additional spending displaces. Allocating an additional £9bn to new medicines means £9bn less available for other health services within the NHS.
“Evidence on the health opportunity cost of NHS spending suggests that diverting resources on this scale would lead to substantial losses in population health (Martin et al., 2021, Martin et al., 2023 and Longo et al., 2023). If there were to be £9bn per year taken out of other NHS services by the end of 2026, then we could expect losses plausibly in the order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands of additional deaths over the next decade (Claxton, 2025).
“The policy is not a straightforward expansion of access, but a redistribution: improving access to some treatments while reducing it elsewhere. That may be a legitimate policy choice, but it is neither costless nor a win-win, and will likely have significantly adverse effects on NHS patients as a whole.”
References:
Martin, S., Longo, F., Lomas, J., & Claxton, K. (2021). The causal impact of social care, public health and healthcare expenditure on mortality in England: cross-sectional evidence for 2013/14. BMJ Open, 11(10), Article e046417. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-046417
Martin, S., Claxton, K. P., Lomas, J., & Longo, F. (2023). The impact of different types of NHS expenditure on health: Marginal cost per QALY estimates for England for 2016/17. Health Policy, 132, 104800. Article 104800. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104800
Longo, F., Claxton, K. P., Martin, S., & Lomas, J. (2023). More long-term care for better health care and vice versa: investigating the mortality effects of interactions between these public sectors. Fiscal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12322
The numbers themselves I took from Professor Karl Claxton’s estimates (found on his research page Karl Claxton – Centre for Health Economics, University of York) which are based on these three papers.
Prof Andrew Morris CBE FRSE PMedSci, President, Academy of Medical Sciences, said:
“Getting effective treatments to patients faster is what matters most, and the approval of new medicines as a direct result of these changes shows that this arrangement can make a real difference to people and families.
“The commitment to increase spending on innovative medicines, backed by interim targets, is a welcome step towards a system that properly values the contribution of medical science. Planned changes to how NICE measures the impact of treatments on patients’ quality of life will also bring its methods into line with latest evidence – something researchers and clinicians have long called for.
“A strong life sciences sector benefits patients first and foremost by supporting faster and fairer access to new treatments, more clinical trials, and continued medical research. It can also bring wider benefits to the economy through investment and skilled jobs. But for patients to feel the full benefit, this must go hand in hand with broader investment in the NHS and the health and care services they rely on every day.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-us-arrangement-on-pharmaceutical-trade-and-pricing
Declared interests
Dr James Lomas: “No interests to declare.”
Prof Andrew Morris: “None to declare.”
For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.