What is on the table

The December 2019 UK general election has returned a landslide majority for the Conservative Party on the single-minded promise to ‘Get Brexit done’. Leaving the European Union as soon as possible will require the Government to secure new trade deals with other countries just as quickly, which now raises urgent questions about exactly what this means for the NHS and its patients.

The Labour Party centred its doomed campaign on the warning that the Conservatives were prepared to sell the NHS to predatory corporate interests to secure a free-trade deal with the US. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn based this claim on documents that showed US negotiators had requested ‘total market access’ to the NHS, and that their UK counterparts had suggested that this was on the table for future negotiations (Perraudin, 2019). To spell out what this could mean for NHS patients, Corbyn pointed to average drug prices in the US being two-and-a-half times what they are in the UK. He illustrated this with the example of Humira (adalimumab), which is used to treat Crohn's disease, pointing out that it costs £1409 for the NHS and £8115 under the US private system—a 576% increase.