Scotland drops Rx drug top-up ban

Scotland's National Health Service is to end the prohibition of patients paying for drugs that have not been deemed cost-effective by the Scottish Medicines Consortium. The announcement of a consultation on the policy by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon follows a recent move in England and Wales (Marketletter November 10), where cancer patients, in particular, have protested over the denial of care by the NHS if they paid for medicines that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) had considered "too expensive" for the universal health care provider to cover (Marketletters passim).

Ms Sturgeon said: "nothing in the new draft guidance should distract us from the priority of making sure that where a patient can genuinely benefit from a drug they are able to access it on the NHS." In a similar approach, Scotland is phasing out prescription charges for medicines by 2011, which are currently L7.10 ($10.55) per item in the rest of the UK (Marketletters passim).