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Brexit
Original poster

Happy that the NHS is up for grabs?

115 replies

flashbac · 04/06/2019 23:53

Genuine question: if you voted leave what do you think about the NHS being up for grabs as part of a US trade deal?
How did we go from 'lets divert the £350m from the EU to the NHS' (big fat lie as we all know) to opening it up to grabby US healthcare and pharmaceutical companies?
Surely nobody in their right mind can think this is a good thing?

OP posts:
Icantreachthepretzels · 05/06/2019 00:25

I've plastered this all over mumsnet - but in case anyone hasn't seen it
petition to protect the nhs from Donald Trump It's gone up by 100 000 people in the four hours since I first saw it - not far from 200 000 now. Please sign and share

Walkingdeadfangirl · 05/06/2019 01:56

Perhaps you could explain what that means instead of just trying to spread fear to stop Brexit?

Walkingdeadfangirl · 05/06/2019 02:00

Trump: "'No leader, it seems to me, would allow Britain to effectively sell the NHS as part of a trade deal".

Tavannach · 05/06/2019 02:00

Perhaps you could explain what that means instead of just trying to spread fear to stop Brexit?

What does your question mean?

Tavannach · 05/06/2019 02:03

Donald Trump is not renowned for honesty or integrity. Don't know how you managed to miss that.

Walkingdeadfangirl · 05/06/2019 02:07

What does your question mean?
My question is asking what the op means. I guess remainers dont care if they can spread fear to stop us leaving the EU. Exactly what does grabbing the NHS mean?

go to backfire.com

Walkingdeadfangirl · 05/06/2019 02:09

I suppose you could say Trump is going to grab our roads, our TV and our air? Does that make sense?

Tavannach · 05/06/2019 02:15

It was Trump who raised it, ssying

“When you’re dealing on trade, everything is on the table. So NHS or anything else. A lot more than that,” he said

He appears to be trying to backtrack given the immediate backlash that got.

Shelvesoutofbooks · 05/06/2019 02:17

@walkingdeadfangirl no one here is trying to stop brexit, if you click on the link it's very much self explanatory - Trump wants the NHS as a part of a trade deal with the US

Walkingdeadfangirl · 05/06/2019 02:26

no one here is trying to stop brexit cough, cough, cough ...

Trump wants the NHS as a part of a trade deal with the US So what does that mean?

MrsTerryPratchett · 05/06/2019 02:54

I'm not up to speed with what Trump is or is not doing, but it's just disingenuous to pretend you don't know what it means. Privatization of health services is a massive market. American insurance companies would love it.

Shelvesoutofbooks · 05/06/2019 03:19

I mean honestly it'd take you less time to google it than to repeatedly ask "but what does it mean" as if you can't read

Ginlinessisnexttogodliness · 05/06/2019 03:21

Makes my blood run cold.
There’s a saying I think...... “just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse”

The worst part isn’t even that Trump has said what I and many others suspected for so long. No, it’s the fact that the Conservative Party will probably be quite receptive to this. Bunch of vultures, circling for ways to fatten their own bank balances

Bearbehind · 05/06/2019 05:36

walking you are being more than a little disingenuous by pretending you don’t know what the OP means.

Brexit was supposed to give the NHS more money, instead Trump has confirmed what anyone with half a brain could see coming; we are in such a weak negiotiating position because we’ve made such fools of ourselves over Brexit, that the US is going to seize the opportunity to get its claws into privatising the NHS as part of any trade deal.

This ‘taking back control’ is working swimmingly isn’t it?

StealthPolarBear · 05/06/2019 05:41

It means that health care in the UK will be privatised and many aspects delivered by American firms. We will be more like America in that respect and they have some of the worst outcomes in the developed world and are poor at universal access to healthcare.

StealthPolarBear · 05/06/2019 05:43

But I'm sure it will all be worth it. It'll be hard now but in five decades we'll wonder what everyone was whining about.

Clavinova · 05/06/2019 06:32

The Telegraph are reporting that Trump has revised his comment about the NHS in an interview with Piers Morgan;

“I don’t see it being on the table.Somebody asked me a question today and I say everything is up for negotiation, because everything is.But I don’t see that as being, that something that I would not consider part of trade.That’s not trade.”

"This is a contradiction to the comments he made earlier at the joint press conference with Theresa May, where he said the NHS was "on the table."

"President Trump’s full and exclusive interview will be on Good Morning Britain tomorrow on ITV from 6am."

TemporaryPermanent · 05/06/2019 06:35

Trump is very dim.

US pharmaceutical companies in the whole are not run by dim peopke and would like to see the NHS broken up into smaller purchasing units so that its ability to depress drug prices is reduced.

Iggly · 05/06/2019 06:37

Exactly what does grabbing the NHS mean

It means healthcare is provided with the aim of making money for rich shareholders.

Break a leg? They’ll try and money from it.

Child has meningitis, they’ll try and make money.

Some will say they don’t care - well some treatments don’t make money at all. Those will be dropped or you’ll have to bring your credit card.

This isn’t “Project Fear”, it’s reality in many countries.

Cobblersandhogwash · 05/06/2019 06:38

Wonder how many Leavers were swayed by info like this?

Happy that the NHS is up for grabs?
Iggly · 05/06/2019 06:38

I suppose you could say Trump is going to grab our roads, our TV and our air? Does that make sense?

He would if he could make money out of it.

Fedupwithchemist · 05/06/2019 06:42

Well the PFI funded hospitals won’t be “up for grabs”, they went years ago, thanks to Gordon Brown.

InTheEndgameNow · 05/06/2019 06:45

m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-lobbyists-brexit_uk_5c5b26c6e4b00187b5579f64?guccounter=1

This is what we might end up with through a US trade deal.

Mistigri · 05/06/2019 06:49

Access to public sector contracts will inevitably be part of any trade deal.

That's not necessarily problematic in itself (private companies in the U.K. and EU already have access to NHS contracts), but it will limit future government policy making because a US trade deal would effectively prevent any moves to return privatised parts of the NHS to the public sector (this could and undoubtedly would be subject to legal action).

It turns any privatisation in the NHS into a slippery slope, and also increases the risk of litigation becoming a large cost burden.

The bigger question is how you protect the overall cost of health provision in this scenario. For example, one of Trump's big gripes is that drugs cost more in the USA than in European markets and, particularly, in the U.K. The NHS is a very large - perhaps THE largest - single buyer from the pharma industry, and it is ruthless about value for money. So it has been very successful in driving drug prices down, at the expense of drug company profits. That situation won't survive a US trade deal, because the pharma lobby has enormous influence over US government policy making.

lonelyplanetmum · 05/06/2019 06:50

There are many articles about how the US healthcare system works. Examples are below.

Make no mistake. Groups like the ERG and Faragists want to move to a US based system -funded by both US and U.K. insurers.

It doesn't happen instantly but incrementally. Staff in the NHS aren't replaced and services shrink. More and more treatments will require payment.

In the US the funded system means paying $ 1,000 insurance per month for a family of four.

The biggest source of bankruptcy in the US comes from those who can't afford insurance who became ill. Read the attached articles.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jan/12/us-healthcare-system-leaves-brits-baffled-enraged

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/10067521/how-does-us-healthcare-work

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/nhs-at-70-free-health-care-theresa-may-diabetes-america-a8422596.html