I find The Times fascinating, as a peek into the id of the British establishment. Thus, it usually seems sort of objective and reasonable — and I find its science coverage excellent, for a daily newspaper — until some event hits the nerve of class interests and establishment ideology, such as on the day after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader. Then the news and editorials fall into line with a kind of mirthless sarcasm that astonishes in its combination of vituperation and simplemindedness. I find myself then reading it, like the scripture of some weird sect — I’m not naming names here — wondering, does anyone really find this either amusing or insightful. With the extra frisson of remembering that those who find it both amusing and insightful are running the country.
Today there was an editorial bashing the NHS. After one of those it-was-probably-clever-the-first-time-someone-said-it quips about how at current growth rates, the NHS will exceed 100 percent of the British economy by 2100, the writer (Ross Clark) refers to one of today’s news items:
A new threat to NHS financial stability has emerged: thanks to the increasing complexity of drugs it will cost a lot more in future to produce generic versions.
At present, drugs typically fall in price by 95 per cent once their patents expire. But new drugs that rely on biological agents are expected to fall in price by only 25 per cent, drastically cutting the £13.5 billion the NHS saves every year by using generic drugs.
The NHS should have cottoned on much faster to the fact that generic drugs cannot be relied on indefinitely. It should be using its power in the marketplace much more to push prices down.
I bet there are heaps of overpaid NHS managers slapping their foreheads, thinking “power of the marketplace, why didn’t I think of that?!” The whole point is that these new drugs are expensive to produce, so no pharmaceutical company is going to rush in to sell it for 5% of the original cost, regardless of whether it is protected by patent rights. We’re seeing a change in the relative cost of development and production. (It’s the reverse of the change in the music industry from the early days of CDs when the physical production of the CD cost several dollars to now when the marginal cost of an album is infinitesimal.)
No amount of “cottoning on” by the NHS is going to change this fundamental reality.
Common Infirmities 