Kinnock: Pharmacy reimbursement 'does not aim' to repay ‘as much’ as drugs cost

The pharmacy minister has said that government drug reimbursement does not aim to price match “every product” dispensed by pharmacists but rather “aims overall to reimburse” pharmacies.

Stephen Kinnock
"Pharmacies were allowed to retain £850 million from the medicine margin"

“Community pharmacy reimbursement arrangements do not aim to ensure that every pharmacy is paid as much or more than it paid for every product,” pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock yesterday (October 21) told MPs.

The comment came after Conservative MP for South West Devon Rebecca Smith asked “how many and what proportion of community pharmacies have dispensed medications at a loss in each of the last three years”.

Read more: Pharmacies underpaid ‘£1 a pill’ for common Parkinson’s drug

Kinnock said that the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) does not hold that information but that drug reimbursement “aims overall to reimburse as much as they were bought for, plus the allowed medicine margin”.

He added that as part of the last pharmacy contract, “pharmacies were allowed to retain £850 million from the medicine margin, on top of what they are paid for the medicines they purchase as part of providing NHS services”.

Losing “£1 a pill”

Meanwhile, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) last week revealed the extent to which “government funding falls way short of the price local pharmacies have to pay for many common medicines”.

In a “snapshot” analysis of the difference between wholesale medicine costs from “two major wholesalers” and NHS funding rates in the September price concession list, it found that pharmacies dispensing Amantadine are being underpaid by more than £75 a pack.

Pharmacies are losing £75.99 per pack, which is “the equivalent of more than £1 per tablet”, it said.

Read more: ‘Unacceptable’ lack of April concessions ‘likely’ due to DH changes

And in April, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) blamed the government’s “untested” changes to the drug tariff that month for a lack of price concessions, which left pharmacists wondering whether the government expects “contractors to make a loss”.

These changes were “imposed by the government without [the negotiator’s] agreement” and were opposed by CPE “in the strongest terms”, it said at the time.

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Kate Bowie

Read more by Kate Bowie

Kate Bowie joined C+D as a digital reporter in August 2023 after graduating from a master’s in journalism at City, University of London. She began covering the primary care beat at the end of 2022, when she carried out several health investigations focused on staffing issues, NHS funding and health inequalities.

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