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.

Nu-Labour did a lot of the background prep for this, back when you couldn't get a cigarette paper between them and the Tories.

Labour has now swept back to the left, and the current Labour manifesto explicitly rules out the NHS being in private hands. I've also read the SNP manifesto on this, and it goes further and suggests legislation to further protect the NHS form privatisation.

Haven't read the Tory manifesto, but in the media Johnson and others have been repeating the mantra from the time of the 2012 HSCA: "Funded by public money; free at the point of use."

The Tories DON'T say where that money will go BETWEEN being collected from the public and its point of use as healthcare.

The answer is: via private companies which will skim off as much as they can get away with.

Leaders come and go - look at each party's track record.

You can tell me whatever you like. I don't have to believe you.

The Tories want to make money for themselves and their mates out of the NHS. They've already started privatising it by the backdoor. YABU.

Spot on OP

@Adenosine no we don’t. We get 20 years from filing date plus the possibility of an extension for drugs with marketing authorisation to somewhat take into account the delay that getting that authorisation causes to the date the drug can be sold. That 20 year period is pretty much harmonised throughout the world (with the extended period being the bit that differs slightly). If you are aware of countries that have a longer patent term, please identify them.

If anyone is trying to make drugs available more cheaply, it’s labour with their policies around ensuring drugs are available at a sensible price, regardless of whether they are still under patent protection, by invoking crown use provisions.

I hope that Boris is paying you good overtime to make up post this shit.

Ok. You object to politicians lying.

Who will you vote for on Thursday then?

Who are you Adenosine? You seem very 'knowledgeable' about the NHS and keen for Brexit to be done sorted out. Anyone would think you were being paid to peddle propaganda!

Frankly all I need is for Johnson to say 'the NHS is not for sale' to know it's a lie. He has lied and contradicted himself at every turn.

Haven't read those particular papers and can't comment on Corbyn's comments on them...

The NHS is definitely up for sale.

US companies will be up for buying.

This will almost certainly become part of larger trade deals. The US would be fools not to exploit our immediate post-Brexit vulnerability.

Forget the papers, the NHS is already being sold off. Not only is the privatisation of the NHS rampant, it’s government policy. The 2012 National Health and Social Care Act decreed that every single contract be put out to tender. Since then 70% of contracts have gone to private providers. They operate under the NHS brand so the whole thing’s been done by stealth.

When John Major tells you the NHS is as safe with the Tories as a hamster with a hungry python, it’s wise to listen.

You can tell me whatever you like. It won’t change the fact that this country’s current Prime Minister is the most untrustworthy unprincipled self-serving charlatan I’ve ever seen in office, nor will it make me trust him and his cabal of liars and idiots. I don’t like the direction he’s taking this country in and I don’t trust him to respect or value anything beyond his own self-interest.

Who I am is a concerned citizen who is sick to the back teeth of being lied to. For the record, I hate Johnson. I think he's a despicable human being who is only able to trade on his bumbling image because nobody ever pulls up posh people for that.

But I also think Corbyn is a lying wanker and I am sick of seeing his wonky glasses face on my telly talking about how we're all going to lose our precious NHS when we're not.

If we have a hard brexit, there'll be a point where we have no trade deals. We are dependent on trade and so will need to secure trade deals as soon as possible (though most will probably take years).

We will be negotiating from a position of weakness. Its all well and good for Boris to say the NHS will be off the table now, but it'll be a million times harder when we're on our knees and desperate for a trade deal with the US or any other major economy.

Just as an eg of what's happening already. From Dec 2017:

Richard Branson's Virgin healthcare firm scoops £1bn of NHS contracts
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/29/richard-branson-virgin-scoops-1bn-pounds-of-nhs-contracts

Richard Branson’s Virgin Care won a record £1bn of NHS contracts last year, as £3.1bn of health services were privatised
[...]
Its growing role has prompted particular anger among anti-privatisation groups. It pays no tax in the UK and its ultimate parent company, Virgin Group Holdings Ltd, is based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven.

In addition, it came under fire for suing six clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Surrey, NHS England and Surrey county council last year after losing an £82m contract for children’s services to a rival bid involving a local NHS trust and two social enterprises. A settlement of the action appears to have involved the six CCGs paying Virgin an undisclosed sum.
[...]
Care UK, which has links to the Conservative party, gained the second biggest share of NHS contracts last year – worth £596.3m.

Oh and before you ask I also think that Swinson is a prating fool and the greens have policies carved out of turnips around a table in Brighton. So I'm not backing any of the horses; I'm just fucked off that grandad caretaker is giving out so much bullshit and people are buying it.

But we will lose the NHS and it has already started. It is slowly and quietly being sold off, just in bits and pieces in the hope that the general public don’t notice.
Our doctors’ surgery is now run/managed/owned by an American company.
Health visitors are paid and managed by Virgin
Etc etc etc...

From 2018:

Hunt's secret NHS plan opens the door to further privatisation
www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/01/15/hunt-s-secret-nhs-plan-opens-the-door-to-further-privatisati

Brexit's dominance of media coverage and parliamentary time is providing the perfect cover for controversial reform of the NHS by stealth.

Jeremy Hunt and NHS England's latest big idea is Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). These bodies would be allowed to make most decisions about how to allocate resources and design care for people in certain areas.

At the moment, that's done by public bodies whose governance is regulated by statute, set up by parliament after wide consultation and sometimes fierce debate. ACOs, by contrast, can be private and for-profit bodies. They are not mentioned in any current legislation and would have no statutory functions. They are not subject to the statutory duties imposed on other parts of the NHS.
[...]
Hunt is planning to lay a raft of secondary legislation - which doesn't require a full parliamentary vote - in February, so that the first ones can be up and running by April 1st.

The ACOs are going to be given long-term commercial contracts of between ten and 15 years

'grandad caretaker' is classic Tory bullshit. Relying on jeering mottos instead of policies.

I'm not a Corbin fan either but one thing I know whether he tells me or not, OF COURSE the NHS is on the table in negotiations. If it's not not for sale - it's for sale.

Not for sake now maybe. Give it a few more years of underfunding, asset stripping ... be unable to provide the service people need and then they’ll wrong their hands and say oh dear we have no choice. Vote Tory for no NHS within 10 years.
Johnson would have ya believe that the document that JC produced is a ‘Russian plot’. Fuck off. He thinks we’re all idiots. He’s wrong. Only some of us are.

@RockinHippy spent too long trying to figure out who Birus was

Who I am is a concerned citizen who is sick to the back teeth of being lied to. For the record, I hate Johnson. I think he's a despicable human being who is only able to trade on his bumbling image because nobody ever pulls up posh people for that

But I also think Corbyn is a lying wanker and I am sick of seeing his wonky glasses face on my telly talking about how we're all going to lose our precious NHS when we're not

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Firstliftlastcall has asked you a question Adenosine, could you answer the question about which countries have a longer patent?

Already underway back in 2013:

Privatised NHS blood service sold to Mitt Romney company
www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/07/19/privatised-nhs-blood-services-sold-to-mitt-romney-s-company

Plasma Resources UK, which provides blood supplies to the NHS, has been sold to Bain Capital, a private equity firm set up by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
[...]
Other competitors [to buy the service] included South Korean drugmaker Green Cross Corp and German plasma specialist Biotest.

Yeah, I think everyone knows that some private providers have already stepped in - a lot of us have been referred to them, me included. And I have to say it's a much better experience than the shit and blu tack that you get in NHS hospitals.

But also, again, this wasn't discussed in negotiations. Wasn't even touched on.

They raised the issue of medicine pricing but that has been contentious and not really effective for either side for some time now, so it's only to be expected.