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.

@Adenosine, you claim the US has no limit on patent extensions. This is wrong. Historically, US patents expired 17 years from grant and it was possible to keep some protection rolling for aspects of inventions through the use of continuation applications, only allowing a patent to grant when it was commercially right for the patentee. This stopped in c.2000 when the US system came in line with everywhere else and moved to 20 years from application date. There are mechanisms by which you can evergreen, ie keep getting new patent protection for new aspects (eg drug in first patent, new formulation in second patent) but this is available everywhere, in the EU, UK and US. If you have something that indicates otherwise, please share your source as I’d be pleased to read it.

As mentioned previously, Labour’s manifesto indicates they want to use crown use provisions to ensure drugs are available at a sensible price. I doubt the pharma industry will be happy with this and but if you want the NHS to have access to cheap patented drugs, it’s one way to do it - force either a good price or threaten to invoke crown use.

Full disclosure, I’m a patent attorney working in the pharma arena.

Boris Johnson is a liar. I wouldn’t trust him to water my plants for a weekend let alone tell the truth about the NHS.

I suspect that Labour will lose next week and we will then soon see the stark reality of the Tory lies relating to the NHS.

PerkingFaintly

Indeed, in many systems, a small payment is required for some services. We already pay for some here, dentistry, opticians, prescriptions. They have recognised that we "the taxpayers" all of us, cannot fund a completely free healthcase system. We need to decided where the pot of available money goes. My contention is that critical care, cancer, A&E, the many difficult diseases and cases that the NHS handles should remain free at the point of delivery. Extra stuff like screening, really and truely doesn't need to be done by the NHS, and can still be provided free to you and me, but paid for by the NHS. The "NHS" as such isn't one big autonomous entity anyway. There are some 9,000 organisations that provide services under the NHS, some are government, some are charities, some are private. All are paid for by the government from our taxes.

I wish I could upload the file, but I can only provide a link:

www.nhsconfed.org/-/media/Confederation/Files/Publications/Documents/Myth-Buster-amends-121119-AW.pdf

@Adenosine Tories lie. Tories cut public services. Tories see Brexit as an excuse to cut public services. Why would you think anything is safe with them - look what they've done over the past 10 years! All the closed hospitals and libraries. The underfunded NHS, the shortage of drs and nurses. The hell that is universal credit. The people that have died because of all the cuts. Brexit. Etc etc etc. Why woukd anyone think anything is safe with them?

I also work for the NHS and it’s disgusting the lies Corbyn is peddling to scare people into voting labour. Mp’s shouldn’t try and scare people.

We’ve used non NHS in healthcare for decades. Nothing new, the NHS doesn’t have the capacity to provide everything, look at the prison service, nearly all of their healthcare is provided by private providers. Who’s going to pick all that up if Corbyn bans private companies? It’s got nothing to do with ‘selling the NHS’ it talks absolute twaddle.

Also US drug companies develop most of the drugs we use, if it wasn’t for them we’d have access to far fewer medicines. Why do people always fly over to the US for pioneering treatments as a last resort. Of course we buy drugs from the US, where else do we get them from?

I also work for the NHS and it’s disgusting the lies Corbyn is peddling to scare people into voting labour
Such as ?

the NHS doesn’t have the capacity to provide everything, look at the prison service, nearly all of their healthcare is provided by private providers. Who’s going to pick all that up if Corbyn bans private companies?
TUPE

The NHS doesn’t have the capacity to provide everything, look at the prison service, nearly all of their healthcare is provided by private providers. Who’s going to pick all that up if Corbyn bans private companies?

The same people who provide it now, employed directly by the NHS.

Using "non NHS" is very different to handing over control of elements of the NHS to those more interested in profit than patients.

The NHS will always exist. The point is that it is being asset stripped, so whilst it is there in name, so much of the quality is gone that it will be worthless.

The Treatment Centre in Nottingham has recently been taken back from a private provider. The same staff are running it, the same treatments and services are being provided.

Circle, who ran the TC previously, are suing the NHS because they don't feel that they were treated fairly during the tendering process. Virgin Healthcare are doing similar elsewhere. A not for profit service should always be given priority over one run for profit, and the fact that has not happened is where we have gone wrong.

Circle, those miraculous paragons of healthcare provision who gave up running Hinchingbrooke Hospital because it was all too difficult. Who was insane enough to give them another contract?

And you believe Boris Oh dear.
Of course it's for sale and as He's likely to stay in no 10 you'll find out soon enough, I guess.

The tories have been in power for 9 years now yet none of the rumours and accusations about the NHS have happened yet 🤔

Oh I forgot, Boris Johnson being PM means he can just decide what he wants to do and pass it without consulting anyone else or anyone else that sits in parliament. Being PM does not equal making massive decisions. Brexit should show you all how little power a PM actually has and how much more power the whole of parliament has and half of them aren't Tories and won't support Boris even if he really, really wants to do something! So unless the conservatives get every single seat in the whole of the UK (will never, ever happen) they aren't going to ever get something as massive as selling off the NHS through parliament and commissioned. Boris can't just decide he's going to do something and do it without heavy consultation, votes or passing a new rule/law

The tories have been in power for 9 years now yet none of the rumours and accusations about the NHS have happened yet

The Lansley Act
full stop

they aren't going to ever get something as massive as selling off the NHS through parliament and commissioned.

Already done in 2012. It's called the Health and Social Care Act.

We're now in the phase of slowly awarding of contracts to external providers, including for-profit companies.

I don't know if the NHS is at risk of being sold off but I am worried about current and projected levels of funding.

You can use this website to find out how the NHS in your area will be affected by the Conservative'a manifesto plans. It's called NHS Cuts but I'm sure some of you will find when you look that there won't be cuts in your region. 😳

www.nhscuts.org.uk/

The full methodology used is available here, it's quite lengthy but it's clear and appears robust and credible>>>

www.nhscuts.org.uk/about/

Anyone who thinks a party which is all about private enterprise and low tax actually, genuinely, wants to protect the NHS rather than make its demise inevitable is a f*cking idiot.

And on the subject of Boris being a liar, former colleagues of BJ at the Telegraph and other journalists have published an extensive searchable database of all BJ’s “lies and mistruths”.

Here it is. It gets updated frequently.

boris-johnson-lies.com/

The website is the work of a collaborative venture by Peter Oborne - Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, Richard Assheton - Times, Sunday Times, Sun & Sun on Sunday; Adam Bychawski - Open Democracy; Charlie Peters - Telegraph; Michael Prodger - New Statesman, Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, Financial Times, and Spectator; Dai Richards & William Wickstead

Have fun!!!

YABU for this silly propaganda post.

And if any of you still have the will to live after looking into projected cuts in the NHS, take a closer look at the schools cuts website which shows school funding per child in 2020, compared to 2015. Just pop in the name of your child's school.

Here is the link to the website https://schoolcuts.org.ukk_ - the methodology they used is set out in full therein.

I think it appears credible and the Institute of Fiscal Studies thinks so too.

"up for sale" - well, we are probably never going to see the NHS "up for sale" in the same way we did the transport/utility companies. But lots and lots of the work the NHS used to do is now being outsourced to profit making private/plc companies. And this will continue until the NHS is a shell unless a stand is made against it. Yes, New Labour started it. The Tories took it and ran with it. It is already happening. And OF COURSE after Brexit the US companies are going to want a bit of it - and it will be very hard for any government to prevent this whilst still getting a trade deal that is of any use at all.

So no, Corbyn is not lying. You are simply deluded.

But then, you hate the NHS anyway, don't you? One of your only other posted threads on MN was telling us how crap it is. Interesting choice of name, to , in that case....

@Adenosine would that be the terribly biased papers that you're on about? Any surprise that this hasn't been reported? They're all self -serving!

Any news of those 40 new hospitals?

How are they defining 'new'?
Where are they going to be built?
What kind of hospitals are being built? What counts as a hospital?

I know these are questions that go beyond the soundbite but the answers reveal the lie that this is based on.

In case you are wondering:

Another 21 hospital trusts are being given £100 million in seed funding to prepare a business case for their hospitals—but no money for any actual building work. The plan is for works on these hospitals to take place between 2025 and 2030.

The government says that seed funding will cover 34 hospitals, and has also published a list of which hospitals are included. By our count, there are 38 hospitals listed (if you count all 12 community hospitals in Dorset which are listed as “potentially” getting funding).

Presumably, the 34 extra hospitals needed to reach the total figure of 40 are to be found within this list of 38, and we’ve asked the Department of Health and Social Care for more information on this.

fullfact.org/health/six-hospitals-not-forty/

@spotsmum no this is propaganda >>>