Thyroid UK

117,062 members • 135,828 posts

How can the NHS justify the cost of T3!!!

I’ve just returned from Turkey and bought 4 x 100 25mcg of Tiromel for just £8. These will last me nearly 12 months.

Yet on prescription for the UK licensed T3 it would cost me nearly £400 a month as my Endo won’t prescribe it even though I have a clinical need.

Why oh why hasn’t the NHS made it a priority to get T3 from a more affordable source! It just seems totally bizarre that T3 is so readily available overseas without prescription yet were denied this essential medication.

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T3 test

14 Replies

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Quite! That was suggested within the Vince Cable adjournment debate, that there is precedent to import cheaper medication from abroad to benefit the NHS and patients ie bypass the Big Pharma monopoly.

MissFG

I think there are a few answers to this, all of them are probably appropriate.

1) In a bid to reduce costs, the NHS is restricting certain medications rather than looking at the fact that they have too many chiefs and not enough indians, they should be doing a cull of top management who don't do a particularly good job.

2) Whoever is in charge of buying hasn't got a clue about sourcing at the best price.

3) The government (whichever one is in, so not a political statement) wants to dismantle the NHS bit by bit, and bring in some privatisation - this is part of the plan.

But then, I'm an old cynic!!!

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn wants to dismantle the Nhs. Maybe the Blairites that surround him do - but he doesn't.

I'd add to that:

4) They don't consider it is an essential 'medication' because they don't have thyroid problems, and know nothing about it.

5) The don't even try to justify it because they just don't care!

The basic problem of the NHS is the management culture that pervades all decision making. Nothing can be done unless it is debated to oblivion by large management groups whose chief aim is to talk rather than do. Also the various groups and responsible decision makers don't talk to each other so there is no joined up thinking. Longwinded processes are dreamed up which simply delay actions beyond all credence. Many people in the NHS know very well how badly it works in administration but haven't (or don't want to exert) the power to change things. Witness the recent hoohaa about Boots overcharging, which must have been going on for years with no-one doing anything about it. The financial waste in the NHS is truly mind boggling.

I would agree. I used to work in pharma and I was astounded by the people who made the decisions and why they made them. At a basic level they ordered stationary like it was going out of fashion and I remember thinking ‘good grief, if only they reduced the spend there, there would be so much more for the stuff that matters’. It’s all about rebates and boosting budgets... nothing to do with what might actually be the best product 😢

Well, as someone who is well on Mercury Pharma T3 but not on Teva T3, importing T3 from abroad could be the start of more problems for me. Fine to start newbies off on other brands, but we all really need to get to grips with the bioeqivalence issue. If everyone on Mercury T3 was swapped to another brand overnight, this might not be in the best interests of cost saving in the nhs.

Because a) they don't care and b) the "Powers that be" probably have shares in the pharma companies involved or have made "arrangements" with them in return for something else.