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  "path": "/2026/04/big-pharma-is-blackmailing-the-nhs/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-27T11:47:21.000Z",
  "site": "https://tribunemag.co.uk",
  "tags": [
    "government support",
    "announced halts in",
    "Bristol Myers Squib threatened",
    "described as ‘sinister’.",
    "no longer ‘competitive",
    "hundreds of thousands",
    "spent almost £20 billion",
    "are still far too expensive",
    "Karl Claxton reckons it will lead",
    "tightly guarded secret",
    "John McDonnell has laid down a formal statement",
    "Medicines for the Many"
  ],
  "textContent": "### American drug companies are pulling investment from Britain in a bid to drive up NHS prices — showing why medicine is too important to be left to the corporate profiteers.\n\n* * *\n\nBig Pharm price hikes threaten more excess deaths than Covid. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)\n\nMore than twelve months of strike action has taken a devastating toll on the NHS. I’m not talking about walkouts by doctors or nurses, but about the sustained capital strike by some of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations in the world. Backed by the president of the United States, these companies have spent the past year trying to strip away the controls that allow Britain’s health service to keep a lid on the price it pays for new medicines. And now it seems they have succeeded.\n\nThe dispute started last January, when British multinational AstraZeneca scrapped a plan to expand a vaccine plant in Merseyside, blaming a lack of government support. By September, following more closures and delistings, the pharma companies began to down tools altogether. AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Merck all publicly announced halts in British investments, with Sanofi and Novartis said to be doing the same. Bristol Myers Squib threatened to withhold a drug from the NHS. By the end of 2025, the corporations had pulled £2 billion in what looked like a clearly orchestrated campaign, which a state official described as ‘sinister’.\n\nThe pharma companies insisted that Britain is no longer ‘competitive’. By that, they meant they could not make the type of profits they believe they deserve, because of the simple fact that we control what the NHS spends on new medicines. Through the public health body NICE, Britain effectively negotiates prices with pharma companies, only buying new drugs when they offer genuine value for money. It can also claw back excessive profits through an accompanying mechanism called VPAG.\n\nOf course, new medicines still cost a huge amount: up to hundreds of thousands of pounds per patient. NHS England spent almost £20 billion on medicines and medical devices last year. Research shows that branded medicines are still far too expensive for the benefits they bring. This is an effect of Big Pharma’s financialised, monopolistic business model. While public money is used for drug research — especially in its early, riskiest phase — the product is later bought and patented by private companies, who charge the highest possible price for it. The industry thereby turns essential medicines for the public into massive returns for investors.\n\nAt the start of 2025, the profiteers saw a golden opportunity in the shape of Donald Trump. Trump pointed out that Americans pay four times as much for medicines as Europeans do, and pledged to rebalance the scales. But rather than reining in private interests, his solution was to take aim at so-called ‘freeloaders’ overseas, threatening tariffs in order to force other countries to spend more on medicines, and to compel pharma corporations to invest more in the US. The trade pact signed by Keir Starmer and Trump last May stated that Britain would ‘endeavor to improve the overall environment for pharmaceutical companies.’\n\nBig Pharma smelt blood, and went into overdrive to make Starmer’s promise a reality. By withdrawing investment, it began trying to blackmail the British government into stripping back its price control mechanisms. The tactic paid off. In December, the government signed a deal with Trump agreeing to lift the price cap on new medicines by 25 percent. This won’t necessarily mean we get more medicines, but it will certainly mean we pay more for them. Britain has also agreed to radically reduce the amount of claw back the government can claim from the industry, raise the proportion of NHS budget spent on medicines, and double the proportion of the GDP spent on new drugs.\n\nHailed by much of the mainstream media as a masterstroke which allowed the government to avoid tariffs, the deal will in fact stretch NHS budgets beyond breaking point. Experts warn we will be handing an extra £9 billion a year to Big Pharma by 2035, with no new public funding to offset the losses. Health economist Karl Claxton reckons it will lead to tens of thousands more fatalities, predicting that, by 2033, ‘the excess deaths from this deal will be greater than Covid.’\n\nThe pact is less of a ‘trade deal’ and more of an agreement to play tribute. A foreign president now gets to demand how much the NHS spends on its medicines. It is even more astonishing that MPs have had no say over this agreement; the text was sneaked out on a Thursday night before Easter weekend, when parliamentarians were on recess. Even the impact assessment remains a tightly guarded secret.\n\nFormer shadow chancellor John McDonnell has laid down a formal statement expressing opposition to the blackmail, which MPs have just over a week to sign. Longer-term, though, the episode makes clear that we need to reduce our dependence on both the major pharmaceutical corporations and on an increasingly predatory USA.\n\nWe do not have to produce medicines in this irrational way. In 2019, I worked with Labour on a groundbreaking policy called Medicines for the Many. It offered a blueprint for building world-class, publicly controlled medical research capacity. It would cost money, but then so do overpriced drugs. What’s needed is a medicine system that caters to human need rather than corporate greed: one that’s controlled by the people of Britain, not by Big Pharma or the White House.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Big Pharma Is Blackmailing the NHS",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-27T12:29:22.000Z"
}