Drugs bill to soar by €30m

The HSE is faced with an unplanned €30m bill for providing drugs not contained in its national service plan for 2012.

A significant part of the cost, between €8m to €10m, will be in providing two Hepatitis C drugs, Boceprevir and Telaprevir.

The drugs were made available in June following the intervention of the Department of Health.

In a letter to outgoing HSE chief executive Cathal Magee, the department’s secretary general Ambrose McLoughlin said Health Minister James Reilly had met with representatives of Hepatitis C patients. He wrote: “The minister is satisfied that there is considerable risk associated with not proceeding with the treatment of clinically appropriate patients with the new drugs to treat Hepatitis C.”

He called for the drugs to be approved for use with immediate effect.

In response, Mr Magee said the drugs would be made available but said the cost of providing the drugs in a full year was €30m.

In the letter released through Freedom of Information, Mr Magee stated: “You will be aware from our service plan that no funding is in place within the HSE for new drugs and current spend is significantly exceeding the approved vote allocation.”

The HSE confirmed yesterday the cost this year of providing new oral anti-coagulants, Dabigatran and Rivaroxaban, will €10m.

In addition, the cost of providing Ipilimumab for cancer patients was €6m to €7m this year.

The extra cost come against the background of a €92m overspend in the HSE’s primary care reimbursement service for the first six months of this year.

The HSE’s latest performance report points the finger at Government for its failure to reduce the price of drugs that would save €100m in a full year.