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.

Just seen this on twitter.

YABU.
It's being defunded till we get to the it no longer works let's just scrap it.
Boris Johnson is the liar, that's well established now.

@TheWernethWife are you leader of the labour party? Going on national television with wonky glasses and made up stories? If not, what I say is not directed at you.

But its directed at someone, who like me, has wonky glasses. Commenting on a person's appearance is bordering on the bullying name calling used by Donald Trump, trying to belittle them in the public eye.

@Theworldisfullofgs, that is horrible but not surprising. All I want to know is, how do we stop them?

Don't vote for them!

You stop them by voting the Tories out. Vote tactically.

Hi Dom 👋🏻

You're talking bollocks btw. HTH

Thank you so much for this. This is exactly why I hate politics and will never vote in my life. I don't want to be part of such a deformed, self-gratifying exercise. I don't trust any of them and in any case, I don't think they have half the influence they claim to have on the economy. When the States go through a recession, we all follow, regardless of the political party, and vice versa.

This really shows how little we understand and how naive we are, building such strong belief out of media who are regaling themselves with all the money they are earning out of our hunger of sensational information that we stupidly believe to represent wealth of knowledge.

It is lazy education and so sad that we all fall for it. We build our perceptions and beliefs out of information purposely given out of context. I've reached the point when I don't just disbelief what is said, but am starting to believe the opposite is probably the truth, and it really doesn't matter which party it is coming from.

Around 13% of mental health inpatient beds are already American. Cygnet are the biggest holder of mental health beds after the NHS. Factor in care homes, residential services and private MH trusts and a lot of MH is already private. NHSE only really look after secure services and CAMHS now and very few inpatient beds in comparison.

It's already happening people just don't realise because largely it doesn't effect them. MH takes around 5% of the NHS budget including CAMHS so imagine what is happening elsewhere.

This is exactly why I hate politics and will never vote in my life

This makes me nearly as angry as the OP.

Yes op we all know all that

Theworldisfullofgs
Just seen this on twitter.

And this is what your source posted on twitter the following day;

"If your -activism- gets you invited into Conservative voting rich white men’s events you’re probably not doing it right, just FYI. So much of this new-age influencer activism has absolutely zero impact and we must reject those that aren’t making people reflect or uncomfortable."

Why should we listen to anything he has to say when he posts hyperbolic nonsense?

"They knew what this would look like.They knew this would cause a stir.They’re laughing at us. They’ve demonised us, defamed us, slandered us, called us conspiracists even though every single authority has sided with us, agreed with us, vindicated us. And now this AGAIN."

Shahmi sanni was a leave campaign volunteer writing social media content in an office in Westminster Towers who left his role six months after the talks started. But yeah, he's obviously been privy to top level secret discussions that even other politicians didn't know about until someone put them on Reddit.

Just seen on twitter, NHS data given to Amazon for free.

So not selling the NHS, simply giving it away?

twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1203584047798202368

Yes. It sprung out at me from Labour's manifesto that they're onto that one:

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.

YANBU.

I am tired of linking independent analyses of how the NHS has always offered a mix of privately provided and "NHS" provided services. The % has remained static for years, at about 7%.

Also, why does anyone really care? If you get a good service from Virgin for your mammograms, or an excellent MRI from InHealth, in a timely manner, and at no cost to you, what's the problem?

Why, when every other European country contracts with private providers for their excellent health services, do we believe that our model is better? You still don't pay. We won't ever pay. It is frankly irrelevant who provides the services.

Step by step we're already losing services to the private sector. I see nurses in the community. They now work for a private company, one that even gives them access to me when I'm an inpatient in hospital. Also when I have a problem with a piece of kit that keeps me alive my first port of call is to a private company, not the hospital. I've seen many services withdrawn or outsourced in the last few years and unless you have the sort of regular contact with the NHS that I have you may not even notice.

Doing the rounds for anyone curious.

People in these other European countries you want us to emulate DO pay for their health services. Not just in taxes, but at point of use.

Eg France en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France
Ireland en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

So where does your bold claim "We won't ever pay" come from?

(Of course the next line to this claim is usually, "OK we'll pay, but don't worry, poor people won't pay," followed by "Don't worry, poor people won't pay much..." and so on down the road.)

SerendipityJane
Is the M in the bottom right hand corner of that image a Momentum symbol?

I can't wait for the election to be over!!

"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."

Just a soundbite of course - lacking detail.

Hopefully more successful than Labour's previous ventures into the digital age;

Jan 2010 Labour's computer blunders cost £26bn

"A series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than £26bn for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of pounds over budget or have been cancelled altogether."

"An investigation by The Independent has found that the total cost of Labour's 10 most notorious IT failures is equivalent to more than half of the budget for Britain's schools last year."

"Parliament's spending watchdog has described the projects as "fundamentally flawed" and blamed ministers for "stupendous incompetence" in managing them."

"Further evidence has emerged over the failings of Labour's most costly programme, the mammoth £12.7bn IT scheme to revolutionise the NHS."

"The Independent has learnt that just 160 health organisations out of about 9,000 are using electronic patient records delivered under the scheme. The vast majority of those were GP practices. New figures have also revealed that millions of pounds have been paid out in legal fees. The taxpayer has footed a £39.2m bill for "legal and commercial support" for the National Programme for IT (NPfIT)."

"Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, said in 2001 that everyone would have access to their health records online by 2005, but it is understood that the Department for Health is still "years away" from fulfilling the pledge."

What was that about free broadband for everyone?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html

www.facebook.com/ledbydonkeys/videos/1002641396765338/

I am so glad you are on the negotiating team OP. Most of us would love for Jeremy Corbyn to be wrong on this. But you know what? On balance, the chances are that he isn't. One of the clues is in what is not in these papers: at no point do the UK negotiators actually say the NHS (in whole or in death by 1,000 cuts) is OFF the table.

Is the M in the bottom right hand corner of that image a Momentum symbol?

Dunno, I was too busy following the link to nasdaq to make sure I wasn't being played. What were you doing ?