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.