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.

OP please answer a pp's question about which countries have longer patents
Op can’t possibly answer that questions- op is deliberately ignoring it as they don’t know the answrr

Ah Clavinova, god loves a tryer.

Missed the very second line in my first post, did you? Where I said outright that Nu-Labour were rooting for privatisation? It was a major reason I didn't vote Labour for some years.

You can be sure I looked VERY carefully at this part of the manifesto for 2019.

Labour will end and reverse privatisation in the NHS in the next Parliament. We will repeal the Health and Social Care Act and reinstate the responsibilities of the Secretary of State to provide a comprehensive and universal healthcare system. We will end the requirement on health authorities to put services out to competitive tender. We will ensure services are delivered in-house and also bring subsidiary companies back in-house. We will halt the fire sale of NHS land and assets.

We will publish an infrastructure plan to return NHS England to the international average level of capital investment and to ensure future decisions are transparent and balanced fairly between every region. We will complete the confirmed hospital rebuilds and invest more in primary care settings, modern AI, cyber technology and state-of-the-art medical equipment, including more MRI and CT scanners.

We will ensure data protection for NHS and patient information, a highly valuable publicly funded resource that can be used for better diagnosis of conditions and for ground-breaking research. We will ensure NHS data is not exploited by international technology and pharmaceutical corporations.

We will uphold the principle of comprehensive healthcare by providing free annual NHS dental check-ups.
labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf

And plenty more. It's all there from p31 onwards.

The US is pissed off that the NHS has enough buying power to be able to get drugs cheaper than is charged to US insurance companies and citizens. For profit. They still make a profit on the sale, just not the obscene amounts

Yep. Yep yep yeppity yep. This.

A fundamental part of Tory ideolody is privatised, paid for services
It drives me crazy that people vote without a basic understanding of a parties ideolody. The only reason it has been so slow is because it is a vote loser
They are experts at hiding their intention and not being transparent. So Camerons big society was code for getting rid of as much as they could and staff with volunteers or lose the service
The NHS is being chipped away at and is now open to private companies. Schools are being run by private companies
Open your eyes op

Maybe have a little read about Virgin Care i.e. Branson who owns our district nurses and then decide whether the NHS is being privatised or not

YABVVVU

They have already started. Here is a list of private contracts that have been or are out to tender.

www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search/Results

This list only shows 1000 contracts, they can't display they full results as the number is too high. So as others have said, not tonight Josephine!

Seems like OP has f*** off as people have completely disproved her post.

Seems like OP has f* off as people have completely disproved her post

Probably off in their dungeon dreaming up the next anti Corbyn thread, what about he eats live hamsters?

Can't wait for tomorrows fantasy made up front pages from the MSM.

BTW, I note the US's published "Summary of Specific Negotiating Objectives" with the UK keeps using the word "fair".

Eg "Procedural Fairness for Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices"

ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Summary_of_U.S.-UK_Negotiating_Objectives.pdf#page=11

What you have to understand is that, for the US, the concept of fairness in trade is akin to that irregular verb, "to gossip":

They gossip.
You chat.
I pass on useful information.

The US proceeds from the position that "All your economy is belong to us," and then huffs indignantly at the unfairness when some other country gets a look in. If you've never watched US telly when trade is in the news, you might think whiny Trump is a bit of an outlier when it comes to whinging about meanie bullies picking on poor li'l USA. Nope, that's pretty much the standard line pouring out of the telly – or was when I was there. I was actually quite shocked.

So Camerons big society was code for getting rid of as much as they could and staff with volunteers or lose the service

Yeppity yep to this, too. Across the board, not just in healthcare.

YABU. The US has admitted to wanting the NHS to form part of any US-UK post-Brexit trade deal. Brexit will leave us weaker and less able to stand up to the US. I’m not sure that Boris and Nigel even want to stand up to them - they’ve both come out as big fans of Trump, haven’t they?

OP.

Boris is a coward. He is refusing to attend interviews. Jeremy Corbyn is looking out for our NHS.

I would never vote Tory.

Seems like OP has f* off as people have completely disproved her post. yeah but its nice juicy title appears in active convos while we (I! ) keep posting and that's all it needs to get paid.

PerkingFaintly
Missed the very second line in my first post, did you?

I posted:
Your examples appear to be blaming the Conservatives.

The dates you listed were 2011 x 3, 2013, 2015 even though the initial contracts were awarded under Labour.

And you posted;
"The new owner, Blackstone made estimated profits of £500 million, stripped the assets, selling the properties and leasing them back to run the homes."

Instead of;
"Blackstone pocketed almost £500m when it finally sold its interest in Southern Cross in 2006."^

You can be sure I looked VERY carefully at this part of the manifesto for 2019.

Was that before or after Labour forgot to include the £58 billion Waspi money in their 'fully costed' manifesto?

2019 SNP manifesto, p18. More detail in some areas than the Labour one, and enshrining in law that trade deals would require the explicit consent of the devolved assemblies/parliament.

We will propose a new law to explicitly protect the NHS in Scotland, Wales and England, and ‘Health & Social Care in Northern Ireland’, from being subject to future trade deals.

The NHS Protection Act would enshrine in law that our NHS must be protected as publicly owned, publicly operated, and its services publicly commissioned.

The Act would stipulate that any goods or services that are procured by the NHS must be explicitly prevented from being subject to any future ‘investment protection mechanisms’ or ‘investor- state dispute resolution mechanisms.

As a result, the new law would force any future government to have these explicit protections and exemptions on the face of any future trade agreements. Any proposed agreements without these explicit protections could not be considered for approval by either the UK government or UK parliament.

^To give a double-lock on protecting our NHS, the new law would also ensure that future trade deals would require the explicit consent of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and Northern Irish Assembly; and conformation that any trade deal entered into did not adversely impact on our respective health services prior to any deal
being ratified.^

We would also support moves to re-instate a publicly owned, publicly operated, and publicly-commissioned NHS in England through the replacement or significant amendment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/www.snp.org/uploads/2019/11/11_27-SNP-Manifesto-2019-for-download.pdf

Oh and anyone who votes Conservative should have to pay for their treatment

I could look up the others, but I'm not sure fishing through the Tory manifesto at bedtime will be conducive to sleep...

PerkingFaintly

I bet you wish the SNP were fielding candidates in England instead of Labour.

If only MP’s would come forward with a plan based on other healthcare models that works well and non profitable (but I am not totally convinced by that)

The NHS is falling apart it’s needs to change and parts have been run by private companies for years.

We have to stop being so idealistic about the NHS

Re patents, both UK and EU patent restrictions limit extensions but the US does not. This applies both to new medicines and existing medications utilised for novel purposes and can significantly extend the length of time before a purchaser has access to generic formulations.

Therefore the UK purchasing model is proving to be problematic not only for the companies who say they can't afford to develop new drugs particularly new antibiotics which are of course needed but also because the most cost effective deals are based on the bulk purchasing model with no room to bump overall price up through longer patents for the newer drugs most of which are targeted at smaller population groups it means that people in the UK just don't have access to them. As has been seen in several high profile legal challenges by NHS patients.

So a re jigging of position has long been on the cards but yes Brexit and the need to look at all aspects of trade with the US has brought extra pressure.

Sense of Impending doom!

"This current iteration of Conservatism, a kind of mutant nationalism that insists all our infrastructure has to be owned by other countries, has nowhere to go but into an asset-stripped, deregulated wasteland."

Thought this Frankie Boyle quote was rather pertinent here.

Lots of aspects of the nhs were always contracted from private companies. Eg GP surgeries are generally either private companies or partnerships owned by some of the GPS who work there. It’s not an issue if they are delivering good care at value for money prices. Same with McMillan cancer or other third sector bodies. I don’t care if it’s good care at value for money to the taxpayers.

I don’t think these silly papers prove anything though. It’s just more fluff and misinformation. The state of politics in the uk concerns me greatly

Did you just join mumsnet to bash the NHS or just pump out Tory election propoganda?

Seeing as your other main recent thread was called "to think that the NHS is really quite shit and that not everyone who works in it is an underpaid hero?"

Hey Boris.