A program designed by the government to require a money-back guarantee on drugmakers if their meds didn’t adequately treat patients has failed to provide any evidence that it was cost effective, The Financial Times reports. The plan was launched more than seven years ago.

The study of five multiple sclerosis drug is the first public analysis of a “risk-sharing” program established by the UK’s Department of Health and several drugmakers after the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, advised the National Health Service not to use the meds.

The findings, which were published in the British Medical Journal (see here) raise questions about the growing number of other such programs between drugmakers and the UK government, the FT writes. The results also prompted fresh criticism of NICE , which assesses the cost effectiveness of new drugs, and the willingness of the NHS to follow its recommendations.

In 2002, NICE rejected Avonex, Betaferon, Rebif and Copaxone as not worth the money and so the various drugmakers discounted their products to between $9,600 and $13,326, the FT explains, but only on the condition that the price could change after two years if results were 20 per cent more or less effective than claimed.

However, it wasn’t until three years later that 5,500 multiple sclerosis patients necessary to assess the drugs had been recruited, and the data was only finally released this week, more than two years after the first evaluation period ended in 2007.

The lead researcher noted it was difficult to assess the cost-effectiveness of MS drugs because of the difficulties in comparison with lack of treatment and because their effect can only be observed over long periods. “There would have been easier diseases to study with this sort of study,” Mike Boggild, a consultant neurologist from the Walton Centre, tells the FT.

The Multiple Sclerosis Society, a patient group, criticised the “belated” publication of the data, called the scheme “ineffective” and highlighted that the ability to gain access to the drugs varied widely across the UK, but is among the lowest levels in Europe. “This is a deeply frustrating situation,” the group’s chief executive, Simon Gillespie, tells the FT.