Pfizer prices gouges by £48mill on £2.3 product.

[madd0ct0r]

From private eye, so no online link.

News that Pfizer, the US pharmaceutical giant, has been overcharging the NHS by about £48m a year for anti-epilepsy drugs will be hugely embarrassing for some of its many political chums in the UK.
The firm spends much time and money trying to win friends and influence in Britain, but according to a preliminary finding from the Competition and Markets Authroity (CMA), Pfizer and a linked drug firm have been "charging excessive and unfair prices in the UK for phenytoin sodium capsules, an anti-epolepsy drug, in breach of UK and EU competition law."
The CMA says Pfizer is probably guilty of "dominance and abuse" because it massively hiked the price of the pills, used by about 50,000 patients a year to control epilepsy. Pfizer's dominance of this market enabled it to push up NHS outlays on the drug from £2.3m in 2012 to more than £50m in 2013.
Among the firm's political friends is Gabby Bertin, who was David Cameron's press secretary for several years before becoming "director of external relations" at Number 10 in 2013. Despite being busy as a key member of Cameron's team, Bertin also found time in 2007 to work for Liam Fox's transatlantic "educational charity" Atlantic Bridge, which was dissolved after the charity commission criticised it for "promoting a political policy closely associated with the Conservative party". Bertin's job at Atlantic Bridge was funded by Pfizer, at the time Fox was the shadow health secretary.
Political influence isn't always so direct, however - Pfizer employs eight leading UK lobbying firms, according to the Association of Poressional Political Consultants register. These include Incisive Health, which was founded by Bill Morgan, who describes himself as "one of the leading architects" of Tory NHS "reforms" )he was a special adviser to ex-health secretary Andrew Lansley).
The US firm also funds corporate-friendly think-tanks, including the cross-party Social Market Foundation's recent "Reforming the NHS for an age of austerity" programme. unsuprisingly it did not recommend squeezing drug prices.
Pfizer will fight the CMA finding, but its political spending may have already helped it win one battle: amid all the pressure for NHS cuts, there was been no great political clamour over drug prices.

Link to UK gov CMA case: https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investigat ... l-products

[Grumman]

The question should not be why Flynn Pharma Ltd jacked up the price, but why anyone still bought it. It's a drug produced by multiple companies that's over a hundred years old, so if one company started charging thirty times more than anyone else, the solution should have been to change brands and leave Flynn Pharma Ltd to rot.