The Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally found that pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Flynn have broken competition law by overcharging the NHS for vital anti-epilepsy drugs.
After reassessing the case, the CMA said it has reached a provisional view that both companies broke competition law by charging “unfairly high” prices for phenytoin sodium capsules.
It said that Flynn and Pfizer exploited a loophole by de-branding the drug – Epanutin – so that it was no longer subject to price regulation in the way that branded drugs are.
“As Pfizer and Flynn were the dominant suppliers of the drug in the UK, the NHS had no choice but to pay unfairly high prices for this vital medicine,” it said.
Following the overnight price increases by the companies, NHS spending on phenytoin sodium capsules rose from around £2m a year in 2012 to £50m in 2013. For more than four years, Pfizer’s prices were between 780% and 1,600% higher than it had previously charged.
Pfizer then supplied the drug to Flynn, which sold it to wholesalers and pharmacies at 2,300% and 2,600% more than the prices they had paid previously.
CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said: “Thousands of patients depend on this drug to prevent life-threatening seizures as a result of their epilepsy. As the CAT recognised, this is a matter that is important for government, for the public as patients and taxpayers, and for the pharmaceutical industry itself. Protecting these patients, the NHS and the taxpayers who fund it, is our priority.”