{"id":53420,"date":"2025-04-27T00:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T00:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/53420\/"},"modified":"2025-04-27T00:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T00:26:07","slug":"prescribing-king-kong-of-weight-loss-pills-could-see-drugs-budget-jump-to-e10bn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/53420\/","title":{"rendered":"Prescribing &#8216;King Kong&#8217; of weight-loss pills could see drugs budget jump to \u20ac10bn\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The State\u2019s drugs budget could more than double to \u20ac10bn if a treatment known as the &#8216;King Kong&#8217; of weight-loss drugs is approved for everyone eligible, a doctors\u2019 conference has heard.<\/p>\n<p>Some \u201cdifficult decisions\u201d are needed about the rising costs of all new drugs as soon as next year, clinical director of the National Centre of Pharmacoeconomics Professor Michael Barry warned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The drugs budget has been rising for the last decade, Prof Barry said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI think our drugs budget is at \u20ac4bn. I got it wrong in the past, I thought it would be \u20ac4bn by 2027, it won\u2019t, it\u2019s here today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He agreed with an estimate of one million people being eligible for these drugs, a figure raised by obesity expert Professor Donal O&#8217;Shea.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">This is based on them having a BMI of over 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThat would in effect add \u20ac6bn to the drugs budget, which would then take it to \u20ac10m,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt\u2019s unaffordable, it\u2019s not going to happen, and I don\u2019t see it happening in my opinion,\u201d Prof Barry said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The HSE is \u201cvery close\u201d to budget expansion limits, he told doctors at the  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/arid-41618509.html\">Irish Medical Organisation\u2019s AGM in Killarney.<\/a>\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Two drugs \u2014 Mounjaro and Wegovy \u2014 are under assessment for weight-loss and other benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">However, he raised concerns about the potential impacts of increased spending.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI anticipate that the assessment will be complete by the end of the year or the start of next year by the latest, then that is when the decision-making will need to be made,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n            The question is \u2018do we fund them?\u2019 or \u2018do we fund them only for a sub-group of people who could benefit from them?\u2019 so it depends, they will be big decisions.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Prof Barry also hit out at claims by pharma companies the HSE is to blame for delays bringing new cancer drugs to patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cDo [the companies] launch the product in Ireland first? Of course they don\u2019t. They go where the money is, the big markets \u2014 Germany, France, Italy, Spain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThe HSE has nothing to do with this. The launching strategy of the pharmaceutical industry is up to themselves, that\u2019s why we\u2019ve delays in access to medicines in this country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He urged: \u201cAll I\u2019m asking for is an honest debate about this. It\u2019s always portrayed, in any article I read, there\u2019s a delay of up to two years and it\u2019s the HSE\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWhat I said today, clearly is it\u2019s not. I have no problem defending this \u2014 these are high-cost drugs and we should be asking about the value for money before we pay tax-payers&#8217; money.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI think people need to be honest, and acknowledge a significant amount of the delay is down to the company themselves.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State\u2019s drugs budget could more than double to \u20ac10bn if a treatment known as the &#8216;King Kong&#8217;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4315],"tags":[105,725,4326,370,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-53420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-news","10":"tag-medication","11":"tag-ozempic","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114407091966826331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}