Pfizer and Flynn fined for overcharging NHS for life-saving epilepsy drug

17 comments
  1. >The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined Pfizer £63m and Flynn £6.7m after finding that they had “abused their dominant positions” in the market to charge unfairly high prices over a four-year period.

    >NHS costs for the phenytoin sodium capsules rose from £2m in 2012 to £50m the following year.

    Scandalous

  2. What is the NHS procurement team doing agreeing to purchase at those ridiculous prices? Should never have signed off and challenged there and then

  3. Cost of business to them.

    The punishment should fit the crime. Take away the patent of the offending medicine to allow anyone to make it for cheaper.

  4. Can you see a problem with locking in long term supply contracts for products that often decrease in price as new suppliers enter the market? This was not a product with a significant share of drug bill. When NHS negotiate for cutting edge expensive cancer treatments it makes sense to negotiate hard. This will have been an entry on a very long spreadsheet.

    You also seem to be unclear on how to negotiate with what, in practical terms, is a monopoly provider. Where products are patented or subject to the regulatory scheme it works better. But this is not true of these products

  5. They’re our saviours though supposedly. Remember when everyone hated big pharmaceutical companies for pulling this sort of dodgy nonsense, but then the scamdemic had everyone kissing their arse, they would *never* do anything to mislead people lol.

  6. > “Their first decision was issued 5 ½ years ago and then successfully appealed by Flynn to the Competition Appeal Tribunal in June 2018, in a full merits hearing with expert evidence over four weeks – a decision which was upheld by the Court of Appeal nearly 2 ½ years ago.

    No, it wasn’t successfully appealed… You triggered a second investigation which reached the same conclusion.

  7. The whole fine-system does not work.

    I think it is time for mandatory jail time for CEOs who are responsible for overpricing the public. Otherwise they will continue to say “hey, we made a surplus, so any fine is still ok with us afterwards”.

  8. The NHS is purposefully run badly – never shohkd have been overcharged and these companies must be fjned to much bigger extents

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