AIBU to tell you all that the NHS is not up for sale and that Corbyn is lying?

[Adenosine]

Background:

• NHS currently purchases drugs produced by US pharmaceutical companies at a reduced rate compared to other healthcare providers including in the US due to two factors - economy of scale as NHS is a national provider and EU patent laws which allow for patents to run out quicker than in countries outside the EU so cheaper generic equivalents are available sooner.
• the patent aspect is already problematic due to a shift in focus from pharmaceutical companies driven by scientific advances which means new products are tailored and therefore cannot be purchased in bulk and open to the same discount as they are useful to fewer people so we buy less of them and don't get money off. Cf many many news articles about NHS not buying life saving drugs.

So, that's the background. Things are already uneasy with our purchasing model unable to allow us access to new drugs.

And then brexit comes along. And with it the possible change to patent protection which has been a key figure in our purchasing negotiations. So we will have to renegotiate in light of us leaving.

And all of this is just a small snippet of the negotiations we'll have to do. But we can't start them yet, because Brexit isn't decided. No one knows what the fuck's going to happen, so we start informal talks. They're not secret as such, just off the record because nothing can be set until we leave/not.

And the content of these talks is what Corbyn's got his hands on. Talks which for very good reasons raise the issue of medicine pricing for the reasons above but which include no agreement.

Literally nothing has been agreed.

The phrase "open market access" occurs right at the beginning of the talks. It describes the US opening gambit which is open market access which the other party [ie the UK] can set out exclusions from.

It's an opener. It isn't agreed. It's just a bargaining position. And it isn't about the NHS. It's about the general US position when they open negotiations with anyone. It's what countries do when they get into negotiating talks with each other.

And Corbyn has spun all of this around into being about evil Tories selling off our glorious NHS. When that isn't happening.

Yet. You missed out the word 'yet'

Hi Birus 😊

Err, where have you been hiding for the last decade, it's already happening, but then you know that & cant help yourself with the compulsive lies can you 🙄

The Tories put Jeremy Hunt in charge of the NHS. Jeremy Hunt - the man who wrote a book calling for the NHS to be replaced with private insurance. I think we know what they want to do because they tell us. Regularly.

Well, anyone could do anything. But based on what Corbyn has in front of him it's not even remotely a plan and he knows it.

Boris !

I'll trust the Tories with the NHS when shell freezes over. If you think they wont try and sell it, you haven't been paying attention the last decade.

Hell not shell lol. My auto correct loves to ruin my points.

And can you guarantee that the NHS is not up for sale? If not, calling JC a liar is somewhat of a stretch.

I'm given to understatement

I don't know who birus is.

The Tories may want to do many things but these papers aren't evidence of any of them.

Thanks for explaining all this. I personally had been really struggling with the concepts...

Fuck sake! It's saturday night, can I not enjoy a glass of mulled wine and not have to read more crap without someone else coming along with another one of these threads.

Have a night off !

Which EU patent laws are you talking about? And what patent laws could we change to?

Yeah whatever.

Whether they sell it to the US or not, there will be nothing left of the NHS if the tories get anymore years in charge of it.

I'm calling him a liar because he is. I can't guarantee anything, obviously. But I know that what he's saying isn't true. If he wants to prove the NHS is up for sale, he'll have to provide evidence. Which he hasn't.

Oh and I'm not a fan of Corbyn, can't bear to listen to him, anymore than I can Johnson.

@Firstliftlastcall we and other members of the EU currently get shorter patent run times compared to other purchasers of pharmaceutical products, which means we can switch to generic products sooner, which means we save money.

However if we leave the EU this may no longer apply. I mean, it may, depending on what deal we get, but it may not. So if we're having trade discussions with the US which is a large global provider of patented pharmaceutical products then this is relevant.

YABVVVVU.

I have been following the sell-off of the NHS since Nu-Labour were preparing the ground for it before 2010.

The Tory-LibDem coalition enthusiastically seized the program and whizzed forward with it. Their Health and Social Care Act 2012 was for this very purpose.

This Act restructured the NHS, bringing in the CCGs and obliging them to put services out to tender. Private and for-profit companies are permitted to apply, and substantial contracts have already been awarded to private companies. It's happening bit by bit, so you don't see a "big bang" of everything being privatised at once.

It was described at the time that the ultimate aim was for "NHS" to be reduced to a brand name, which could be used by Serco, Capita, Virgin, etc as they won the contracts.

Unsurprisingly, the for-profit US healthcare companies were salivating at all this. (Presumably so too were companies of other countries – just as our privatised utilities are now owned by eg French company EDF).

This was before the Brexit referendum.

It's ludicrous to imagine US companies have now lost interest in the lucrative UK market. If anything, they'll now be cheering because the US has much more leverage over the UK while we're desperate for trade deals in sorts of areas.

YANBU!

I hate the narrative that the conservatives/Boris want a American style healthcare system.

Privatisation doesn’t equal health insurance !

And as I said, the way that medical research and development is going means that our current bulk buying discount doesn't really work for anyone. This has been an issue for years. Our procurement policies mean that we don't buy new drugs unless they're effective for a large segment of the population, but the drugs that are being developed now are more specifically targeted. And actually even if we wanted them we couldn't get the same deals as we can on other medicines because by their nature they're appropriate for fewer people so we don't need to buy as many.

This is the background that drug pricing was raised in. But actually it's been a known issue for years.

Just a friendly reminder/warning

Oh it's only an opening gambit. That's all right then 🙄

I know who the proven serial liar is and it's not Corbyn. It's Boris Lying Johnson.

@PerkingFaintly maybe, but there is nothing in the papers about that.

@MaxNormal yes it's an opening gambit. This is how negotiations work. It wasn't agreed, at all. And it wasn't to do with the NHS but the whole broad question of how the UK and USA continue to trade post brexit.