Competition watchdog fines pharma companies £260m for overcharging the NHS
The UK competition regulator has levied £260m in fines against a number of drug companies for charging the NHS excessively high prices for a drug used to treat life-threatening conditions including Addison’s disease.
The Competition and Markets Authority said Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK, which is now known as Accord-UK, charged overly high prices for hydrocortisone tablets for almost a decade and paid rivals to stay out of the market.
Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK had increased the price of 10mg and 20mg tablets by over 10,000 per cent compared with the original brand version of the drug, the CMA said in its statement on Thursday. The increases meant that the cost of a single pack of 10mg tablets to the NHS rose from 70p in April 2008 to £88 by March 2016.
“These are without doubt some of the most serious abuses we have uncovered in recent years,” said Andrea Coscelli, chief executive at the CMA. “The actions of these firms cost the NHS — and therefore taxpayers — hundreds of millions of pounds.”
He added: “Auden Mckenzie’s decision to raise prices for de-branded drugs meant that the NHS had no choice but to pay huge sums of taxpayers’ money for life-saving medicines.”
The CMA has also fined Accord-UK’s former parent company Allergan for paying competitors to stay out of the market. In total the CMA fined a string of pharma companies including Allergan, Cinven Partners and Accord Healthcare a total of £260m.