ECoJ Opinion finds that UK's drug prescribing incentive scheme is contrary to EU law

The European Union's code relating to medicinal products for human use precludes a public body forming part of a national public health service, in order to seek to reduce its overall expenditure on medicines, from implementing a scheme which offers financial incentives to medical practices (which may in turn provide a financial benefit to the prescribing doctor) to prescribe a specific named medicine supported by the incentive scheme, said Advocate General Nilo Jaaskinen. This is the case, he added when that is either:

(a) a different prescription medicine to the medicine previously prescribed by the doctor to the patient; or

(b) different prescription medicine to that which otherwise might have been prescribed to the patient but for the incentive scheme, where such a different prescription medicine is from the same therapeutic class of medicines used for treatment of the patient's particular condition.