Dr Rachel Clarke@doctor_oxford
This may seem arcane, but it’s a deeply concerning & spectacularly cynical move from this government to sideline NICE - the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - whose role is vitally important in protecting NHS patients from the lobbying clout of the Pharma industry lobby.
Until now - and since 1999 - NICE has made independent, evidence-based decisions about which medicines constitute value for money for the NHS to buy. Largely free from political manipulation, it’s renewed internationally as a model of how to protect patients against excessive drug company prices. It enables the NHS to strike hard bargains with Big Pharma.
But @wesstreeting has just used a statutory instrument in parliament (that no-one has voted on) to award himself power to dictate what the NHS pays for drugs, overriding NICE’s vital role in insulating the NHS from pharmaceutical price gouging.
Why would he do something so self-evidently bad for patients? Because, it seems, this is a price the government is willing to pay to do a deal with Trump on US-UK drug pricing.
What an outrageous power grab for a man who claims to care about patients. Already hospitals up and down the country are cutting staff and closing services under pressure to make cost savings. But every pound spent on, essentially, increasing profits for US Pharma is money that *doesn’t* get spent on nurses, doctors and treatments we know are good value for money.
As the editor of the BMJ, @KamranAbbasi, wrote this week, this: "will end up harming vulnerable people to boost the profits of already obscenely profitable drug companies."
Starmer has shamelessly caved in to the White House. Even the former Tory Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, now a Lord, has joined forces with Labour and Lib Dem MPs opposing Streeting’s power grab.
Truly an appalling move from a government that claims they’re rebuilding the NHS while, in this case, blatantly undermining our abilities to provide cost-effective care.
