UK drug companies fined for overcharging NHS for hydrocortisone tablets
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Thursday 15 Jul 2021
(Sharecast News) - The Competition and Markets Authority has fined UK drug companies more than £260m for overcharging the NHS for hydrocortisone tablets.
The competition watchdog said on Thursday that Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK - now known as Accord-UK - charged the NHS "excessively high" prices for hydrocortisone tablets for nearly a decade. In addition, to protect its position as sole provider of the tablets, and enable it to continue to increase prices, Auden Mckenzie paid off would-be competitors AMCo, now known as Advanz Pharma, and Waymade to stay out of the market.
Actavis UK continued paying off AMCo after taking over sales of hydrocortisone tablets in 2015, the CMA said.
The watchdog found that Auden Mckenzie and Actavis increased the price of 10mg and 20mg hydrocortisone tablets by more than 10,000% compared to the original branded version. This meant the amount the NHS had to pay for a single pack of 10mg tablets rose from 70p in April 2008 to £88.00 by March 2016.
CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said: "These are without doubt some of the most serious abuses we have uncovered in recent years. The actions of these firms cost the NHS - and therefore taxpayers - hundreds of millions of pounds.
"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. In practice, the NHS was at one point being charged over £80 for a single pack of tablets that had previously cost less than £1.
"These were egregious breaches of the law that artificially inflated the costs faced by the NHS, reducing the money available for patient care. Our fine serves as a warning to any other drug firm planning to exploit the NHS."
Tens of thousands of people in the UK depend on hydrocortisone tablets to treat adrenal insufficiency, which includes life-threatening conditions such as Addison's disease.
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