UK-USA Government agreement will mean that the NHS drugs bill will rise by 12%. But it is highly likely that our NHS/Media/Government will not tell the whole story!
Prices in a competitive economic market are usually determined by two factors, supply and demand - or at least this is what economic theory has taught us for centuries! However, in the health market they seem to be a matter for agreement by government, under pressure from the powerful Pharmaceutical Medical Establishment (PHE). The Daily Mail tells us what we are allowed to know has happened:
“Under the terms of the agreement, the UK will get a preferential tariff rate of 0% for all medicines exported to the US for at least three years. But, in return, the Government has agreed the NHS will increase the price it pays for new medicines by 25%.”
The Mail, alongside most other mainstream media outlets, in similar, almost identical articles, continues with quotations from a variety of people to justify the deal.
‘This vital deal will ensure UK patients get the cutting-edge medicines they need sooner, and our world-leading UK firms keep developing the treatments that can change lives. It will also enable and incentivise life sciences companies to continue to invest and innovate right here in the UK. This will support thousands of skilled jobs, boost our economy and ensure that the breakthroughs that happen in our labs turn into treatments that benefit families across the country.’ (Liz Kendall, Science minister).
Peter Kyle, the Business/Trade Secretary, said: ‘This deal guarantees that UK pharmaceutical exports – worth at least £5 billion a year - will enter the US tariff free, protecting jobs, boosting investment and paving the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences. We will continue to build on the UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal, and the record-breaking investments we secured during the US State Visit, to create jobs and raise living standards as part of our plan for change”. (Peter Kyle, Trade Minister).
The USA health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., also justified the agreement, stating: “Americans should not pay the world’s highest drug costs for medicines they helped fund. This agreement with the UK strengthens the global environment for innovative medicines and brings long-overdue balance to US–UK pharmaceutical trade”.
So the driving forces for this massive price hike for drugs and vaccines are almost entirely economic and political, and certainly not medical - except in the promises and hopes for the future.
It is clear that the UK government is bending to pressure from the USA government which was threatening to impose tariffs on British drug companies. The UK pharmaceutical industry, in large part because of this threat, was proposing to withdraw promised new investment into the UK’s economy. This is confirmed in the Mail article which states that the agreement comes after big pharmaceutical companies ditched, or paused, £billions of planned UK investments this year.
Yet the medical side of the story remains untold, and is likely to remain untold as far as the mainstream media is concerned.
Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are largely ineffective, and through their serious adverse reactions, disguised as “side effects”, they contribute to severe illness and disease. In other words, they do not work; and they cause serious patient harm.
This is what we are being asked to pay, an extra 25%, for drugs that are not “safe and effective”, as we are routinely told. It is a price hike for something that have been a leading factor in the rise of chronic disease to epidemic levels, in other words for something that has been making us sicker for at least the last 70+ years.
The NHS descends further into financial failure.
It is yet another cost to a national health service (NHS) which has been on its knees for decades, and is now close to bankrupting the national economy. The NHS budget has been increasing exponentially every year since in foundation in 1948. Its annual budget that year was just £460 million. This is equivalent to about £21.5 billion in today’s money. However, this financial year the cost of the NHS has risen to over £200 billion, and is projected to rise to £230 billion next year - even prior to these increases in drug prices.
The Taxpayer pays
The government has already said it will pay the additional £3 billion, which places yet another burden on taxpayers, for a service that is now 10 times more expensive than originally envisaged. This is not just a comparison of health costs. The NHS has clearly NOT been underfunded, as is so often claimed. Nor is it because of population growth (48.9 million in 1948, and 69.5 million in 2025) - an increase of some 4,573% (if my maths is up to the task).
This percentage increase is probably a very approximate estimate of how much sicker we have become - following nearly 80 years of ever-increasingly consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccine.
More money for the Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry is already the most profitable industry in the world and now they are being offered yet more money by the British taxpayer. Much of this new money will be spent by drug companies on ensuring that we are not told about the failure of their drugs and vaccines.
Both governments and key politicians will be lobbied by the PME.
Conventional medical practitioners will be reminded that their future careers depend on the PME.
And the mainstream media corporations will be persuaded by advertising revenues to ‘stay on the PME message’.
The absence of competition within the NHS
There is no competition for drugs and vaccines within the NHS. It is completely dominated by pharmaceutical, drug-based treatments. When you see your doctor, or go to the local hospital, you will get medical treatment based on pharmaceutical drugs. There is no homeopathy on offer, no herbalism, no chiropractor, no acupuncture, indeed, not much natural therapy of any kind offered or allowed with the NHS.
The NHS supplies the PME with a monopoly. This offers two benefits:
As economists have known for many years, monopolies can charge whatever they like for their products; so drug companies are in control of drug prices.
Once a monopoly has been granted the organisation granting it (the NHS in this case) becomes totally dependent on a single supplier. Thus the NHS is obliged to pay the prices demanded by PME. Perfect circularity!
Kennedy’s Health Reforms
This has all arisen from a health debate currently going on in the USA. Robert F. Kennedy, Jnr., the Health Secretary, is not just bringing the cost of pharmaceutical drugs down in the USA (which may be fair), he is challenging much else about pharmaceutical medicine:
Medical Science. Kennedy is casting serious doubt on the quality (and honesty) of the ‘science’ that has been testing drugs/vaccines that over the last 70+ years. It has consistently found them to be “safe and effective” - before patients finding, to their cost, that they cause serious illness and disease. So medical science is causing significant patient harm.
Drug Regulation. Kennedy is challenging a system of drug regulation that has approved these ‘scientifically’ tested but dangerous drugs/vaccines. They mostly confirm the dishonest ‘science’, and then fail to take appropriate action to protect patients from harm when that harm has been reported.
Kennedy’s challenge to the PME constitutes a serious problem for the drug industry. Like never before, drug/vaccine safety and effectiveness is being brought into serious question. The USA drug regulator, the FDA, is now investigating the performance of some of the industry’s most profitable drugs, demanding more proof of their safety and effectiveness, before they are given to patients.
This constitutes a serious threat to the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry. This suggests that UK drug companies are not threatening to withdraw planned investment in Britain because of the USA tariff threat, but because of the possible reduction in drug sales arising from the ‘threat’ to drug/vaccine sales:
having to prove that their drugs/vaccines are really “safe and effective”,
the publicity that pharma drugs/vaccines are not as safe, or as effective, as has been claimed for many decades.
On top of this, drug companies are having to reduce their prices in the USA, another blow to their profits. So they want to recoup their losses in Britain.
So the PME is facing a serious problem, both in credibility, and in profitability. And the UK government has agreed to pick up the tab, and pay the price. It sees the health situation in Britain with a simplistic naivety.
that it is pharmaceutical medicine that has kept us healthy, and that protects us from serious illness and disease!
that illness is a misfortune, and not (in large part) the result of pharmaceutical medical treatment!
that they are responsible for our health treatment, and need to spend as much money as possible for pharmaceutical health treatment!
that there is only one “safe and effective” health system that will deliver it, and there are no alternatives to pharmaceutical medicine.
