Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

So far this year, 23 new medicines have been approved for reimbursement by the HSE. In 2013, the House concluded that decisions on which drugs should be approved should not be political decisions. Such decisions are, therefore, not made based on political considerations but on medical evidence and the necessity, for all sorts of reasons, to ensure that we pay a fair price. If we pay an unfair price, other things will suffer and nobody wants that. It is always open to companies which have a medicine that they want reimbursed to come back in with more data supporting the clinical claims they are making or with a fairer price.

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