A drugs company under scrutiny for increasing the price the NHS pays for lifesaving pills by 1,000 per cent in two years has dramatically cut its charges after a Mail on Sunday investigation.
The firm slashed the price of its hydrocortisone tablets, used to treat kidney patients, by £7.40 – saving the NHS almost £500,000 on its monthly drugs bill.
The company’s boss had claimed the NHS ‘doesn’t care what it costs’ when he was asked to explain the price increases passed on to the taxpayer.
The price cut came as the Department of Health admitted it does not police the cost of everyday medicines supplied to the NHS.
Despite claims of profiteering on some commonly prescribed drugs, civil servants said the department ‘does not regulate generic prices’.
The Mail on Sunday investigation revealed how some pharmaceutical companies were imposing huge price increases while earning massive profits. Drugs firm Auden McKenzie was charging £44.40 for a packet of its 10mg hydrocortisone tablets, but on Monday – the day after our investigation was published – the company wrote to wholesalers cutting the price to £37 with immediate effect.
The firm had increased the price of the tablets for the NHS from £5 in 2008 to a peak of £48 earlier this year – making it about £2.4 million a month.
Company boss Amit Patel, 35, whose personal wealth is said to exceed £40 million, claimed the price rises were needed to pay for his firm’s new multi-million-pound factory production line.
He refused to say where the factory was or give any further details and said the price of the drugs would ‘creep back down’ because the firm had recouped much of its outlay.
In a previous interview with The Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘Joe Public doesn’t know what it takes to . . . revive these old drugs. Quite rightly . . . the Government views medicine as public safety, so they don’t care what it costs.’
He added: ‘To be honest, they don’t care what it costs. You either meet their criteria or you don’t market the product.’
Last week, he issued a statement denying that he had claimed the ‘NHS doesn’t care what drugs cost’ and saying he ‘strenuously denies ever discussing the production costs of the drug’.
Questions to Auden McKenzie’s media advisers asking for the reasons for the reduction in the price of the tablets went unanswered yesterday.
Between 2007 and 2008, the firm’s turnover rose from £5.3 million to £10.6 million and its profits trebled to £6.2 million.
Details of its more recent accounts – which coincide with the increased price of hydrocortisone – are not available and are listed as overdue by Companies House.
Via: dailymail.co.uk