The NHS is a vital public service which helps to improve the lives of millions of people each year with around £11 billion pounds spent on medications to fight illness. Of the £11 billion around £8 billion is spent on branded medicines. With such expenses to cover there is little wonder the variety of medicines available on a subsidised prescription is very limited. In particular, the Department of Health is keen to narrow down the types of illnesses covered by state funding as well as promoting the use of cheaper non-branded generic medicines. Medications which are commonly prescribed on the NHS include statins. Most statins are low in cost and are considered life or death medicines. Treatments for impotence on the other hand only exist as branded products and the medications are considered as lifestyle enhancing rather than vital to life. prix pour le viagra ou le cialis médicaments impuissance cannot be justified as part of the NHS spend and for this reason ED is not treated unless caused by another far more severe illness.
The Government employs several public bodies in the regulation of pharmaceutical prices, regulation of money spent on medications and in weighing up the cost effectiveness of drugs and other medical interventions. These bodies work primarily to control the profits pharmaceutical companies can make on medicines sold to the NHS as well as control any initial retail price and price increments on any medicine that follow.
Despite the efforts of government bodies to reduce the costs of prescribing treatments on the NHS, the system fails when doctors are unaware of how their prescribing affects the NHS budget. Many doctors have simply no idea about how expensive some medicines are and opt to prescribe a pricey branded medicine over a bioequivalent generic version which would work just as well. Moving forward it is important to create a system by which doctors can prescribe effectively and more cheaply, so as not to undermine practices further up the chain.