“think about making some of the standard drugs in this country to improve supply.”

A friend was telling me earlier about the various logistical tricks that Lidl and Aldi use to reduce prices. For example, because they primarily stock own-brand products, this reduces the number of different variants/brands per product they have to source, which means they buy larger amounts from fewer suppliers. This means they can negotiate with the supplier to get them to package the product so that packaging has super prominent barcodes for easy scanning, and the boxes can go straight from a pallet onto the shelf, reducing labour. In short, by doing stuff in bulk, they have more negotiating power.

i think your point about stabilising drug supply is an example of the kind of thing the NHS could do to leverage its enormous purchasing power. I know that one of my medications is quite expensive for the NHS, but also quite widely prescribed, for example.