By Maggie Fick and Alistair Smout

LONDON, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Britain and the United States are poised to agree to zero tariffs on pharmaceutical products, with an announcement due at the White House on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said the deal is expected to include an increase in the percentage of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) budget that is spent on medicines.

It will also involve a major change in the value appraisal framework at NICE, a UK government body that determines whether new drugs are cost-effective for the NHS, the sources said.

NICE’s “quality-adjusted life year” measures the cost of a treatment for each healthy year it enables for a patient, with the upper threshold being £30,000 per year. That threshold is set to b

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