Quote Originally Posted by lisvaneblue View Post
Ok, but Im not sure your experience relates to new research based prescription medicines. They are generally not launched on an EU wide basis. Currently the EMA approves such medicines for EU. However, that is just the first hurdle.

The medicines then have to be authorised for use by individual countries.. in our case in UK by NICE. Other countries have their own methods of putting products on an approved list. Then there is the matter of pricing. Unlike non prescription medicines each EU country can set an acceptable price for prescription medicines through negotiation with the manufacturer. In UK this is done via a system agreed between Pharma industry and government.

There are a lot of other variables that I won't go into now. Suffice to say that there is currently free movement of prescription medicines across EU but not free pricing, and this can lead to supply issues as traders move goods from a lower price country to a higher price one.

So, in my experience prescription medicines are launched to each individual EU country at variable times. From discovery the patent clock is ticking and Pharma does not wait, as you implied, in order to launch in bigger markets first. So you are wrong in thinking we would delay launch in UK because EU is a bigger market
you are just talking about the commercial agreements, whereas I was talking about regulatory approvals which is where the biggest impact will be of divergence from Europe.