SHAMEFULL

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Price fixing, bid rigging, market allocation, etc, are all illegal, and if caught, punishable.

It's particularly unsettling when the target is the NHS, agreed, but ultimately it's just corporate greed at its worst.
 
I went to my local gp for an ailment a while ago, was prescribed paracetemol, told my gp dont worry about writing a prescription its ok i will just buy some from tesco and he looked very confused, told him since a box cost the nhs £6 and i can buy a box for 29p its not worth the nhs being raped for this after all its my nhs too and i want to keep the cash for more important things! Now i have a friend has his own company that does really well, his older sister is married to a company director and they are doing well too and his younger sister has a senior position for a finance company and is also doing very well, now the mum is well off too gets paracetemol on prescription and the whole family have boxes of the stuff which kinda annoys me as everyone can afford 29p but just think **** it i can get it for free and i will save 29p. I think things like this is the actual issue with the nhs!
 
I went to my local gp for an ailment a while ago, was prescribed paracetemol, told my gp dont worry about writing a prescription its ok i will just buy some from tesco and he looked very confused, told him since a box cost the nhs £6 and i can buy a box for 29p its not worth the nhs being raped for this after all its my nhs too and i want to keep the cash for more important things! Now i have a friend has his own company that does really well, his older sister is married to a company director and they are doing well too and his younger sister has a senior position for a finance company and is also doing very well, now the mum is well off too gets paracetemol on prescription and the whole family have boxes of the stuff which kinda annoys me as everyone can afford 29p but just think **** it i can get it for free and i will save 29p. I think things like this is the actual issue with the nhs!
I think you may have discovered a case of 'entitlement culture' but I can't see a millennial there heading for Starbucks so probably not....
 
Pretty sure NICE guidance says things like paracetamol shouldn't be prescribed.
 
Two ls?
 
Now i have a friend has his own company that does really well, his older sister is married to a company director and they are doing well too and his younger sister has a senior position for a finance company and is also doing very well, now the mum is well off too gets paracetemol on prescription and the whole family have boxes of the stuff which kinda annoys me as everyone can afford 29p but just think **** it i can get it for free and i will save 29p. I think things like this is the actual issue with the nhs!

Welcome to Scotland.

Free stuff isn't so free when it eats into your NHS budget and reduces other services.
 
Paracetemol is a useful analgesic for many suffers of chronic pain who cannot take opoid drugs due to their addictive nature and side effect profile particularly on the alimentary system. the maximum daily dose is 8x 500 mg tablets per day meaning a retail pack of a maximum of 16 [for overdose reasons] lasts 4 days-----so patients in arthritic pain and who may be unable to drive might be forced to go shopping every 4-8 days for medication- NICE one. People all over the UK abuse the NHS in many different ways----some get free paracetemol - some in government office award lucrative contracts to their relatives----some pharma companies abuse their monopolistic supply position to enrich themselves by millions---all are depriving their fellow citizens of NHS medical care to a greater or lesser extent.
 
If you are aged between 18 and 59, an NHS prescription will cost you £9.15.

The only people within this age group who might ask for paracetamol prescription on the NHS (or other cheap over-the-counter medication) are those who are exempt from the prescription fee - benefit claimants and disabled.

But for anyone who is required to the pay the NHS prescription fee, this will make no sense.
 
If you are aged between 18 and 59, an NHS prescription will cost you £9.15.

Not in Scotland ....

And my suspicion is that the pharmacies are quite happy with this setup. And at the same time many of the public don't realise that the money spent on dispensing cheap stuff that would otherwise just be bought 'over the counter' reduces the amounts spent on other parts of the NHS in Scotland.
 
Maybe it's the way the procurement is set up by the NHS. I remember well one of my previous companies I worked for had a "deal" to buy all their stationary from one source. The company then purchased form said source no problem until the supplier was asked, do you supply biros as well? Yes and my old company bought 20 boxed of I think 25. Invoice arrived @£5 per pen. But this went on for years so you can imagine how much was overspent on biros.

Maybe NHS also bought the tablets from the wrong source. I am sure there are a lot of "just doing my job" in the NHS offices.
 
My understanding is that by buying competitors out of the market, the companies involved were able to increase the price of the medicine.

So this scam wasn't aimed specifically at the NHS, but given how health care works in this country, the bulk of prescription medicine is purchased by the NHS, which is why they were worst affected by the price increase.

In this case, there was nothing that NHS buyers could do - the price of the medicine went up and they couldn't get it any cheaper elsewhere. Presumably the NHS are those who alerted the authorities.
 
The current directors of Accord-UK are Nadine Jakes, Sandra Lee, Dr James Burt and Jonathan Wilson.

There are two pertinent questions here:

A. Were any of them Directors (in the current or previous company) during the period when the prices were hiked?

B. If they were not, what action did they take to rectify the situation once they have learnt about it?
 
..................

In March 2019, a single box of 100 gloves was £6.75
In August 2020, same thing, same supplier £20.00

..............
I’d imagine that was supply and demand driven.....Economics 101. People seem to think that it is wrong for companies to profit when they can. They might have been selling those gloves at breakeven prior to the pandemic.
 
I’d imagine that was supply and demand driven.....Economics 101. People seem to think that it is wrong for companies to profit when they can. They might have been selling those gloves at breakeven prior to the pandemic.

As said, turning a profit is fine, but price-rigging isn't. The pharmaceuticals in question have been accused of the latter, not the former.
 
The current directors of Accord-UK are Nadine Jakes, Sandra Lee, Dr James Burt and Jonathan Wilson.
READ POST 6 LINK
QUOTE:-
Auden Mackenzie ,took over the medicine in 2008 when it was a branded product and thus subject to NHS regulatory price caps. The Middlesex-based company de-branded it, freeing it from price controls, and jacked up the prices massively from 70p a pack in April 2008 to £88 by March 2016 for a pack of 10mg tablets.
Companies House filings show Auden Mackenzie (Pharma Division) Limited was owned via another company, by business people Amit Patel and Meeta Patel.
From 2008 to 2009 - the year in which they took on the medicine, the company’s sales leaped from £10.6 million to £25.8 million.
By 2014 - the last year before the Patels sold the business, [ To ACCORD-UK] revenues were £77 million.
Operating profit jumped from £4.2 million in 2008 to £45 million by 2014.
During those years, Auden Mackenzie paid dividends to the Patels totalling £8.7 million, Companies House shows.
 
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A spokesman for Accord Healthcare [ who were fined] said: “We are very disappointed by the CMA’s decision Having only inherited the product in January 2017, we have done nothing but continuously reduce the price in the face of significant competition. So it wasn't the present company directors that artificially jacked the price altho due diligence at the point of purchase by Accord should have alerted them to the source of Auden MacKenzies meteoric rise in profitability
 
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A spokesman for Accord Healthcare [ who were fined] said: “We are very disappointed by the CMA’s decision Having only inherited the product in January 2017, we have done nothing but continuously reduce the price in the face of significant competition.

This is an embarrassing declaration from a corporate spokesperson.

When buying a company, the new owner buys both the assets and the liabilities. Accountancy firms such as Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, etc, get paid a pretty penny to carry-out due diligence prior to any acquisition. Someone clearly didn't do their homework, and there's a price to pay. I bet that if the new owner found an undeclared hidden asset worth millions more than what they paid for the company, they wouldn't donate it to charity... so there.

As for the comment that "we have done nothing but continuously reduce the price in the face of significant competition", well, had they voluntarily approached the NHS and offered to pay back the price discrepancy over the years, then the matter would have never ended-up with the CMA in the first place. Reducing the price of further sales just doesn't cut it.
 
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As said, turning a profit is fine, but price-rigging isn't. The pharmaceuticals in question have been accused of the latter, not the former.
...and I was talking about rubber gloves ;)
 

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