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Editorial: Britain is pushing for patent changes that could increase the cost of Indian generic drugs, diverting more of the NHS budget to big pharma
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Scooped by Graham Watson |
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This is an interesting coda to the ongoing UK-India trade talks that looks at the distributional implications of the deal, with it seeming to be the case that the UK government is looking to enforce intellectual property rights in such a way that generic drugs become more expensive.
If so, it's a trade-off: public health, and largely public spending given the number of exemptions that mean that relatively few people pay for their subscriptions, and the profits of pharmaceutical companies. And given the size of the health budget, you would have thought that such a position isn't in the economy's best interests wouldn't you, not least because big pharma will, I'm sure, be very keen to minimise its tax liabilities.