Americans pay four times as much for medicines than Brits as campaigners demand the UK government resists Trump’s threats – amid fears the NHS could ‘go broke’
Donald Trump and Big Pharma are “holding Britain to ransom” on drug pricing, international campaigners have warned.
Global Justice Now has called on the Government not to cave in to Trump’s threats of huge tariffs if the NHS does not pay billions of pounds more for medicines amid fears it could see the NHS “go broke”.
British firm AstraZeneca announced on Friday it was raising its planned investment in one of its US manufacturing sites to £3.3 billion as part of a commitment to bring critical medicine production into the country. It came as a ruling by UK regulators found no evidence of cartel-like behaviour by the firm and other drug company giants in threatening to pull out of Britain en masse.
Writing for the Mirror today, Global Justice Now director Nick Deardon says: “Donald Trump has told us repeatedly that we are ‘freeloaders’. Why, he asks, do Americans pay four times as much for medicines as Brits? These high prices leave many ordinary Americans with a horrible choice – go without the treatment they need or be forced into poverty and debt.
“Americans need a government that cracks down on this greed. Instead, Trump is demanding the rest of us pay the same price as Americans do.”
The NGO, alongside others the Balanced Economy Project and Just Treatment, had written to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) calling for it to investigate potential cartel-like behaviour from Big Pharma. The CMA has now responded saying: “We have not seen any direct evidence that the public announcements were made as a result of anti-competitive collusion between the pharmaceutical companies.”
It comes after AstraZeneca, Lilly and Merck paused more than £1.3 billion of investment into Britain in the last year in its dispute over NHS value for money thresholds. Merck’s scrapped a £900 million research and development centre it had started building in Britain.
AstraZeneca then paused a £170 million investment in its Cambridge research site. Then in a new move on Friday the British-Swedish firm announced it was increasing planned investment to its site in Virginia to £3.4 billion in a drive to move more of its manufacturing capacity to the US.
This has all come after the January cancellation of a planned new £390 million vaccine production centre in Speke, Liverpool. Eli Lilly now says it is waiting to finalise its investment in a Lilly Gateway Labs site in Britain.
The collective bargaining power of the NHS means it has historically been able to negotiate much cheaper prices than private hospitals in the US. Now the UK government has reportedly drawn up proposals to increase the NHS “value for money” threshold by 25% and is in advanced talks with the Trump administration.
An industry figure with knowledge of the proposal told Politico : “We have kicked up enough of a stink and they have given in. This is the price you have to pay post-Trump for global pharma to continue to play in the UK.”
But previous research published in the Lancet had suggested the drugs price threshold, set by regulator the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is already too high. Experts say when the NHS pays more for drugs it has less money to spend on capacity like staff and hospital beds.
Our NHS is being held to ransom by Donald Trump and Big Pharma. The Government must not give in.
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now
Donald Trump has told us repeatedly that we are “freeloaders”. Why, he asks, do Americans pay four times as much for medicines as Brits? These high prices leave many ordinary Americans with a horrible choice: go without the treatment they need or be forced into poverty and debt.
Trump’s question has a simple answer. In the US, Big Pharma, as the world’s largest drug companies are called, have been allowed to profiteer off people’s ill health.
Using the monopolies these businesses enjoy over certain medicines, they fleece the public – taking eye-watering public subsidies to develop the medicines, and then charging whatever the market will bear for the final product. Some new medicines now cost millions of dollars per patient.
Americans need a government that cracks down on this greed. Instead, Trump is demanding the rest of us pay the same price as Americans do. And if we refuse? He’s prepared to slap massive tariffs on us.
Big Pharma is delighted with Trump’s behaviour. These companies hate the way our NHS refuses to buy medicines which are poor value for money.
In effect, the NHS can cap drug prices because, in order to sell to us, the companies have to bring their prices down so they are no longer quite such poor value. This keeps drug prices under control and means the NHS doesn’t go broke. And don’t worry, the drug companies are still highly profitable.
Recently, our Government has been trying to negotiate a new price cap model. But Trump has given the companies all the ammunition they need to fight back.
In order to force the Government to back down, some of the biggest drug companies, including our own Astra Zeneca, have pulled billions of pounds worth of investment from Britain. Some have even threatened they will stop supplying new medicines.
So coordinated does this action appear that, two weeks ago, we joined campaigners at Just Treatment and the Balanced Economy Project, to ask the authorities to investigate these companies for anti-competitive behavior.
Then, this week, we learned worrying news. It appears the Government has surrendered, lifting the price cap on certain medicines by 25%. It has been reported that, with MPs still in the dark about the plan, Starmer has asked Trump whether he will accept their compromise.
For the sake of our NHS, the government must not go through with this. We gain nothing from diverting precious NHS funds into the pockets of some of the richest companies in the world. What’s more, this is part of a dangerous slide into Britain becoming little more than a vassal of American power. Decisions about how we regulate medicines must be made here, not in Washington DC.
Pharma is trying to scare us, pretending that unless we give them what they demand, we’ll no longer have access to medicines. That’s not true. What’s at stake is how we research and produce medicines in the future. Instead of taking orders from corporate boardrooms, the Government must take the bull by the horns and start building a medicine industry which puts our health needs first.
That will cost money, but so do overpriced drugs. By working with other countries – as equals, not supplicants – we can fund scientists who are developing lifesaving drugs, and work with public and private sectors to make those drugs as safely and cheaply as possible, preventing individual corporate behemoths developing intellectual monopolies which they use to profiteer and deny access to life saving medicine.
A different way of making medicines is possible. Increasingly, our national health service depends upon it.