Pharmacydude:What KM doesn’t tell us about UK:
1. The UK spends considerably less on medicines per person than similar countries. For every £100 in GDP, the UK spends 81p on pharmaceuticals. This compares to £1.94 spent by Germany and £1.84 spent by Japan. The UK also spends a lower proportion of its total health budget on medicines than similar countries (UK 9%, Australia 14%, France 15%, Germany 17%).
2. There won’t be a budget allocation for Vazkepa before 2026, after the current SPENDING REVIEW PERIOD ends in 2024/25.
3. The implications of the UK government's so-called “Voluntary Scheme” for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access (VPAS) on the price of Vazkepa.
As NHS has been overwhelmed for more than a decade - and now is in dire straits – the Government set up VPAS in 2019 to help make drugs more affordable for the national health system (NHS), by returning a proportion of funds based on the sales of branded prescription medicines when a maximum sales growth rate is exceeded. Initially, the VPAS rate was capped at 2% per year. However, as the pandemic raged, that triggered sharp spikes in payback rates, to 15% in 2022, then jumping to 26.5% in 2023.
This implies an actual Vazkepa price of EUR 125.69, USD 126.42 or GBP105.98.
Nowadays a number of pharmas have revolted against this “Voluntary Scheme”, imposed by law and not negotiations, like AbbVie, ABPI, Eli Lilly and Company, and AstraZeneca which has just decided to build its new plant in Ireland rather than England.
Companies are increasingly arguing that it is no longer possible to justify the UK’s “Voluntary scheme” to global boardrooms and investors. As repayment rates in 2023 have surged to 26.5% of revenue as a consequence of failings in the existing scheme’s design, the UK finds itself placed completely out of step with its global competitors and outside historical norms.
4. Burnt cash in UK as he tries to hide to SVB Leerink analyst Roanna Luis what he confessed to her last year “As a reminder…. we hired our full team in the U.K., I would say, a bit ahead of time” by saying we hired our UK manager one month before launch in October 2022, thus implying there was no cash burn. Yet, cash burning is still on-going.
5. What is the size of the full team including sales representatives.
6. How will Amarin not burn cash to maintain the “incredible talented” full team “with very significant cardiometabolic experience at every level” in the absence of an allocated budget for Vazkepa
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