Dobson and Pfizer in stand-off on cost of Viagra
By Nicholas Timmins and Clive Cookson
09/16/98
Financial Times
London Edition
Page 10
Frank Dobson, the health secretary, yesterday appeared locked in a stand-off with Pfizer over the price of its anti-impotence drug Viagra , which was awarded its European licence yesterday.
Mr Dobson said the GBP 4.84-a-tablet price of the drug would have to come down, despite Pfizer saying the National Health Service had agreed the pricing "in principle" on Monday.
Ken Moran, Pfizer's chairman, said the company would not lower the price.
The drug could cost the NHS between GBP 50m and GBP 150m a year, the health secretary said, and the price needed to fall. "That money isn't there, so therefore, we have to take the money away from maternity services for women having babies or people who are being treated for cancer, or people who are being treated for heart disease," he said.
But Mr Moran said Pfizer would not lower the price, even if the government refused to allow it to be prescribed on the NHS at all.
In a global market, he said, pricing had to be broadly the same everywhere to avoid profiteering and parallel imports from one country to another. "The price in the UK and other European countries is pretty much the same."
Mr Dobson will meet senior executives from Pfizer shortly. He said he hoped Viagra would be available "to certain people who have had particular accidents or suffer from certain physical conditions".
Roger Kirby, secretary of the British Association of Urological Surgeons, said there was "no logic to the position where I have to tell patients that I am not allowed to prescribe a GBP 5 pill, but I can give a GBP 10 injection or a GBP 2,500 implant".
He said Viagra was likely to replace current impotence treatments in 80 per cent of cases, doubling the numbers treated for the same cost.
Most chemists were still deciding their pricing for Viagra on private prescription last night, although Boots plans to sell it at just under GBP 7 a tablet and Moss at GBP 6.
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry attacked the government for its temporary ban on the drug as it released three studies arguing that treatments that were once attacked as being too expensive to be provided on the NHS had proved "highly effective investments."
Alpha-interferon for hepatitis C, EPO for kidney failure and anti-HIV combinations for Aids had all proved their worth, saving time in hospital and other expensive treatments.
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