Radio 4's Inside Health this week highlighted shortages of certain medicines. This must cause sleepless nights to all the health ministers in the UK, not just Nick Hancock in Westminster.
[Later] The BBC news site has more here. The graph included is open to several interpretations. One is that stockpiling along the supply chain increased after the result of the referendum became known, declined as it looked as if an acceptable deal with the EU27 could be reached, and resumed as it appeared that the UK government still contemplated a hard Brexit.
A sensible move which could have been made long before Brexit when these shortages first became obvious has now been made because of fears about Brexit. Until now, if a pharmacist recognises that one branded formulation is equivalent to the prescribed one which is out of stock, he or she has had to send the patient back to the GP to request a changed prescription. The "serious shortage protocol" described here is reported to have been approved by government and will be brought into effect "in weeks". Where there is genuine equivalence, a pharmacist will be able to substitute one brand for another without the delay of reference back to the GP.
It has long been suspected that wholesalers have been able to play the market by creating artificial shortages. There is also the problem that insurance-based health providers on the continent are able and willing to pay more for medicines than the more tightly-budgeted NHS can. It seems to me also that the concentration of supply, both in manufacture and wholesale, in fewer hands over the last thirty years has reduced the benefits of competition. As drug companies have become larger, and more sensitive to stock market pressure, they have found that the profit margins on some common drugs are too low and have discontinued manufacture.
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