'We can't': Jeff Lei­den stands his ground as MPs grill Ver­tex on pric­ing dis­agree­ment with NHS

Jeff Lei­den be­gan his tes­ti­mo­ny in front of the UK Par­lia­ment’s Health and So­cial Care Com­mit­tee with a note that as a med­ical stu­dent, he’s spent three months in Lon­don’s Queen Square Hos­pi­tal. That first-hand knowl­edge of the NHS, how­ev­er, has not helped ease ten­sions with the sin­gle pay­er sys­tem for the past few years over the re­im­burse­ment of Orkam­bi. Nor did it bring him any clos­er to the politi­cians who in­vit­ed him un­der the spot­light on Thurs­day.

In an hour­long back and forth be­tween the Ver­tex CEO, his chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer and sev­er­al MPs where ac­cu­sa­tions and frus­tra­tions were lurk­ing just un­der a thin veil of British po­lite­ness, the two sides dug in­to the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness mod­el, ex­ec­u­tive com­pen­sa­tion, the role of pub­lic and phil­an­thropic dol­lars in de­vel­op­ing new cys­tic fi­bro­sis drugs, as well as moral and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of the whole dis­cus­sion.

Sign up to read this article for free.

Get free access to a limited number of articles, plus choose newsletters to get straight to your inbox.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER