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© 2020, The Royal Society of Medicine. Objectives: To estimate additional spending if NHS England paid the same prices as US Medicare Part D for the 50 single-source brand-name drugs with the highest expenditure in English primary care in 2018. Design: Retrospective analysis of 2018 drug prescribing and spending in the NHS England prescribing data and the Medicare Part D Drug Spending Dashboard and Data. We examined the 50 costliest drugs in English primary care available as brand-name-only in the US and England. We performed cost projections of NHS England spending with US Medicare Part D prices. We estimated average 2018 US rebates as 1 minus the quotient of net divided by gross Medicare Part D spending. Setting: England and US Participants: NHS England and US Medicare systems Main outcome measures: Total spending, prescriptions and claims in NHS England and Medicare Part D. All spending and cost measures were reported in 2018 British pounds. Results: NHS England spent £1.39 billion on drugs in the cohort. All drugs were more expensive under US Medicare Part D than NHS England. The US–England price ratios ranged from 1.3 to 9.9 (mean ratio 4.8). Accounting for prescribing volume, if NHS England had paid US Medicare Part D prices after adjusting for estimated US rebates, it would have spent 4.6 times as much in 2018 on drugs in the cohort (£6.42 billion). Conclusions: Spending by NHS England would be substantially higher if it paid US Medicare Part D prices. This could result in decreased access to medicines and other health services.

Original publication

DOI

10.1177/0141076820918238

Type

Journal article

Journal

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine

Publication Date

01/09/2020

Volume

113

Pages

350 - 359