Action should be taken against pharmaceutical companies who hike prices of off-patent medicines

We live in a time where a majority of us, in the UK, take a special pride in our NHS. We are told it’s the envy of much of the world. We know it’s been under tremendous resource strain for many years and generally support year-on-year super-inflationary rises in its funding.

When it comes to theft (and fraud) from the service, we rightly take the moral high ground. Often it is an employee or group of employees simply stealing something and we delight in seeing them publicly shamed and successfully prosecuted. What is sad, though, is a similar shaming doesn’t get meted on the senior executives of pharmaceutical companies who have been caught by a regulator cynically hiking prices of off-patent medicines supplied to the NHS. Will we see them in turn (individually) prosecuted? Will they be named and shamed? What do you think?

Mike Price, retired pharmacist