US drug companies and the NHS
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is Britain's health service really up for sale? Ahead of a general election in the UK, Ed Butler looks at why the NHS probably gets a good deal on drug prices compared with other countries, and why US drug companies might want the health service on the table in any post-Brexit trade deal between the US and the UK. We hear from the BBC's health editor Hugh Pym, US pharmaceutical industry analyst Nielsen Hobbs and Professor Allyson Pollock, director of the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University.
(Photo: Protestors show support for the NHS at a protest in London, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.7 | Today, we're looking at Britain's enduring love for its national health service. |
| 0:12.5 | It's the most fantastic institution we have in our country. |
| 0:16.9 | The NHS should be protected at all costs. |
| 0:20.2 | Yes, Britain's publicly funded health service. |
| 0:22.7 | It's one of the cheapest health services of any major economy, |
| 0:26.2 | but could post-Brexit talks with the United States pharmaceutical firms threaten that? |
| 0:32.0 | Pharma has been a big component of all the trade deals that have been negotiated recently, |
| 0:38.8 | and they want to make the best deal possible, and they're putting a lot of effort into it. The price of keeping Britain's |
| 0:43.3 | healthy. That's Business Daily from the BBC. If there has been one issue to dominate the UK |
| 0:51.8 | election campaign so far over the last few weeks it has probably |
| 0:55.5 | been this, the alleged threat to Britain's national healthcare provider. |
| 1:00.0 | What I have here, 451 pages of unredacted documents and information. |
| 1:10.6 | The words there of the leader of Britain's main opposition party, |
| 1:14.1 | Jeremy Corbyn last month, revealing documents that he claims |
| 1:17.3 | show secret trade negotiations underway with the United States |
| 1:21.5 | over the future of the National Health Service. |
| 1:24.1 | The US is demanding that our NHS is on the table in negotiations for a toxic |
| 1:30.3 | deal. It's already been talked about in secret. That could lead to runaway privatisation |
| 1:37.3 | of our health service. The US and the UK have already finished initial discussion on lengthening patents for medicines. |
| 1:47.3 | Longer patents can mean only one thing, more expensive drugs. |
| 1:52.8 | Lives will be put at risk as a result of this. |
... |
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