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pharmaceutical industry
US-UK Medicine Deal Will Take 'Wrecking Ball' to NHS, Causing 229,000 Excess Deaths: Study
"We cannot afford to sit by while our NHS is picked apart by a foreign regime," said one member of Parliament.
Jul 02, 2026
One member of British Parliament called on the Labour government to defend the country's revered National Health Service "with everything we have and firmly stand up to the bully in the White House" after a study published Wednesday showed the UK-US pharmaceutical trade deal brokered last year is projected to cause 229,000 excess deaths as funding is stripped away from the NHS.
“It is a complete insult to patients who are suffering and dying on hospital trolleys and waiting months for treatment," said Helen Morgan of the Liberal Democrats Party regarding the new analysis. "We cannot afford to sit by while our NHS is picked apart by a foreign regime."
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of York, the University of Liverpool, and Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand and published in the British Medical Journal, found that £44.7 billion ($59.5 billion) will have to be diverted from health services by 2036 in order to pay for new medications under the deal.
The agreement was reached last December, with recently resigned Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government agreeing to pay 25% more for new US medications over the next decade. The NHS will double the percentage of gross domestic product that it allocates for pharmaceuticals, from 0.3% to 0.6%, with the spending increasing from 10% to 12% of the universal healthcare system's budget.
In exchange, the Trump administration agreed not to impose tariffs of up to 100% that he had threatened for UK medicines being imported to the US.
Science Minister Patrick Vallance insisted in April that the deal would give NHS patients access to "life-changing new medicines that they previously would have been denied" while boosting the UK's "life sciences sector" by avoiding Trump's tariffs.
"Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."
But Sir Ciarán Devane, chief executive of the NHS Alliance, told The Guardian that the study raised "serious questions" about whether Britons will truly benefit from the agreement.
"If billions of pounds are diverted away from frontline care to meet higher medicines costs, the consequences for prevention, community services, and the treatment of long-term conditions could be profound," said Devane. "The government must urgently publish the full impact assessment and ensure there is appropriate scrutiny of the deal if it could have such far-reaching implications for population health.”
The projected avoidable death toll in the study far exceeds that which the UK saw during the coronavirus pandemic, when 137,000 excess deaths were recorded between March 2020-June 2022.
"If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291,000),” reads the study.
The greatest number of excess deaths is projected to occur in patients suffering from cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal issues as well as cancer.
Patients with “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems" will also face "broader effects on quality of life," the research states.
The government has assured the public that "frontline services" will be protected, notes the report, but "the NHS will need to fund this deal from allocations made six months before the deal was agreed. The evidence suggests that if additional public expenditure was available, it could be more effectively deployed within the NHS itself."
The research projected that the greatest number of deaths would occur in cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and cancer patients.
It added that there will also be broader harm caused to quality of life for patients in those sectors as well as “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems”.
Tim Bierley, a campaigner with the UK-based group Global Justice Now, said that the report "adds to the overwhelming evidence that the Trump medicines deal risks taking a wrecking ball to our health and our economy."
"Billions that could be spent on recruiting more NHS staff, cutting [general practitioner] waiting times, or improving our hospital care are set to be siphoned off by corporate giants in the pharma industry," said Bierley, whose group has joined the campaign Just Treatment in filing a legal challenge against the deal. "Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."
"The next prime minister," said Bierley, "must change direction, stand up for our NHS, and unpick the mess left by their predecessors.”
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Trump Taps 'Manifestly Unqualified' Peter Thiel Protégé as Acting CDC Director After RFK's Purge
A health researcher for Public Citizen said Trump's interim CDC director has "no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views."
Aug 29, 2025
After pushing out his own handpicked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, infectious disease expert Susan Monarez, fueling a wave of outraged resignations this week, US President Donald Trump has appointed a loyal acolyte to replace her at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s side.
On Thursday, the president tapped one of RFK's top aides as interim CDC director: biotech investor Jim O'Neill, a man with no medical experience but extensive experience profiting from healthcare while working at billionaire GOP megadonor Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Mithril Capital.
Unlike his predecessor, whose ouster came as she tried to push back against RFK's anti-vaccine agenda, O'Neill fits snugly into the secretary's efforts to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine, and potentially ban it outright, as the Daily Beast reported earlier this week.
"A tech investor with no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views, Jim O'Neill was unfit for the number two position at HHS and manifestly unqualified to lead the CDC," said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, on Friday.
Just as Kennedy did during his confirmation hearings, O'Neill insisted he was "pro-vaccine," noting that he was "an adviser to a vaccine company." However, this is belied by his record on the subject.
He has championed unproven cures like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and vitamin D supplements to protect against Covid-19, and has accused the CDC under the administration of former President Joe Biden of downplaying the vaccine's dangers while railing against mandates.
O'Neill has also praised Kennedy's response to the measles outbreak that swept across the US earlier this year, during which the secretary downplayed the severity and cast unfounded doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the measles vaccine that had virtually eradicated the disease before vaccination rates began to decline.
"Unlike Susan Monarez," Steinbrook said, "O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
O'Neill melds medical crankery with a Thielite strain of anarcho-libertarianism. He has served on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization founded by Patri Friedman, the grandson of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman, who advocates for corporations like Apple and Google to form their own floating cities at sea, which would be governed as corporate "dictatorships" free from the constraints of democratic governance.
That anti-government ethos extends to his views on the healthcare system, which O'Neill says is flawed not because of the rampant profiteering of the private companies that run it, but because it is supposedly not "free market" enough.
In 2014, he advocated for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin approving drugs for the market without conducting clinical trials to determine their effectiveness. "Let people start using them, at their own risk," he argued, "Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."
He has also argued for the government to allow people to sell their own internal organs. This process often results in deteriorating health for the disproportionately poor people who partake.
While working at HHS under the administration of former President George W. Bush, O'Neill also opposed the FDA regulation of companies that use algorithms to perform laboratory tests.
At the time, he was focused on DNA testing products like 23andMe, but a report from the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen says that "a decade after he made this remark, it's clear how dangerous such a concept is," noting that "with the development and proliferation of artificial intelligence, algorithms are omnipresent in the practice of medicine, including in diagnostic tools, medical devices, AI assistants to doctors, and personalized medicine."
In addition to Thiel's ideology, he reportedly brings several conflicts of interest to the CDC director job from his time working at Thiel's venture capital firm.
Accountable.US reported Friday that O'Neill "took money from, helped incubate, or was otherwise linked to at least eight medical industry startups with direct business before the department he could help run."
These include firms he advised, like the pharmaceutical company ADvantage Therapeutics or the National Institutes of Health grantee Rational Vaccines, which manufactures herpes drugs.
It also includes four companies seeded by his Thiel-affiliated venture capital firm Breakout Labs, some of which have received government funding or have products awaiting FDA approval.
Though O'Neill agreed to divest from some of these companies and abstain from involvement in decision-making with them as part of his ethics agreement, the report notes that "he did not promise to abstain from decisions involving these companies for the duration of his term, or to abstain from doing business with them after departing HHS."
"O'Neill would be in a prime position to ensure favorable outcomes for several medical industry startups he's been financially linked to that have direct business before HHS and the CDC," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk. "How can American patients be sure that proper vetting of these companies would take place on O'Neill's watch and that public health will be a higher priority over the profits of his former clients?"
Though Steinbrook describes O'Neill as "manifestly unqualified" for the position, he said, "No credible public health authority is likely to work for Kennedy, who is dictating the agency's decisions based on whim, not science."
"The only path forward," Steinbrook said, "is for Kennedy to go, which Congress, professional organizations, medical journals, and the public should demand."
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Trump Tariffs Show GOP Aims to Make Working Class Fund 'Payday for Billionaires and Giant Corporations'
One critic said the party's "top priority is making working- and middle-class families pay more for healthcare, lifesaving medications, food, cars, and electronics, all to fund more tax breaks for the ultrawealthy."
Feb 19, 2025
The national campaign Unrig Our Economy said Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump's promise of tariffs targeting the automobile industry, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductor chips is just the latest evidence that elected Republicans are prioritizing megarich individuals and corporations, not working people.
"This action is further proof that Republicans' top priority is making working- and middle-class families pay more for healthcare, lifesaving medications, food, cars, and electronics, all to fund more tax breaks for the ultrawealthy," said Unrig Our Economy spokesperson Kobie Christian in a statement.
The statement followed Trump discussing the forthcoming tariffs with reporters on Tuesday at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Bloomberg's Hadriana Lowenkron asked about his plans for new taxes on imports.
For the auto industry, "I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it'll be in the neighborhood of 25%," Trump said. For pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, he added, "it'll be 25% and higher, and it'll go very substantially higher over course of a year," giving those industries some time to set up U.S. factories to avoid the tariffs.
On April 1, "members of his Cabinet are due to deliver reports to him outlining options for a range of import duties as he seeks to reshape global trade," Reuters reported.
Trump's 10% tariff for imports from China has taken effect, but his 25% tariffs targeting Canada and Mexico have been delayed.
David Greene, an industry analyst at Cars.com, told CNN that "if the administration moves forward with a 25% tariff on all auto imports, car shoppers should get ready for some sticker shock at dealerships."
"If new car prices increase, more buyers will shift toward used vehicles, and as demand rises, so will prices," Greene said.
The president's latest comments on tariffs came after Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week advanced out of committee a budget plan that would cut healthcare and food assistance programs to fund tax giveaways for the rich.
The Economic Policy Institute last week released a report detailing how extending the expiring provisions from the tax law that Republican lawmakers passed and Trump signed in 2017 "will have painful trade-offs for the U.S. economy and most Americans."
Christian said Wednesday that "even as the cost of everyday goods continues to rise and Trump and the billionaires in his administration arbitrarily cut programs that help feed children and seniors, Republicans in Congress are still pushing forward an agenda that would give billions in handouts to the wealthiest few, while leaving the rest of us behind."
"Our representatives in Congress need to look out for their constituents," the spokesperson added, "instead of prioritizing cost-raising tariffs to bankroll a massive payday for billionaires and giant corporations."
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