Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You've got that exactly back to front. NHS's immense buying power lets them negotiate lower prices for drugs, exactly as medicare used to (before pharma lobbying stripped them of that power). In principle, you're correct. In practice the fact that they're the only buyer, means in many cases that they pay at whatever a drugs company sells at since there's no "but company X is only paying Y, why are you charging us Z…
>In principle, you're correct. In practice ... It sounds like you are disputing empirical evidence as well as standard economic theory regarding monopsonies. >The UK public might "adore" the NHS, but they have a pretty poor understanding of how it is funded. Not really. It's mostly funded with taxation. They are not so aware of the corruption going on underneath with taxpayer money. >If the government kept funding th…
When there are multiple sellers of generic drugs, you're correct. When there is one seller of a non-generic, life saving drug with no alternative, the NHS is going to pay whatever the one seller, which by definition is a monopoly, is going to charge. [1]
> What is even the point of that sentence?
That we cannot keep increasing NHS funding exponentially. Some people seem to find that fact hard to grasp - there's an upper limit. Another commenter talks about the UK raising debt to fund the NHS. Thank goodness there's a set of rules for government borrowing in the capital markets.
> A) If it is a majority of years it's a fairly slim majority and B) they werent there when it was set up.
Both parties campaigned for the NHS in the 1940s. Labour won. Blair, in power for over a decade promised to "fix the NHS" whatever that meant, but he didn't do it. Thatcher/Cameron/Johnson, all in charge for 2 decades or so, still haven't "sold it off".
> Somebody who knew that they could start charging either customers or government through the nose and make it fantastically profitable.
Except it will never happen. The government would not introduce a commensurate tax cut since they're no longer funding the NHS, so your cost of living would go up, and even in the UK, I think people would get rather upset.
> Branson is one example (Virgin Healthcare sucked £2 billion out of NHS coffers, yay for crony capitalism).
Did he really? Evidence? 2 billion of private money paid by companies into Virgin Healthcare, sure. But did he take £2bn from the NHS?
> They are not so aware of the corruption going on underneath with taxpayer money.
What corruption? Surely the police should be involved if there's true corruption?
I won't defend the NHS. I'll defend the staff that treated my father, but the organization itself needs fixing.