There's a scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie where our heroes need to navigate an unseemly space bureaucracy. Our protagonist, Londoner Arthur Dent, jumps at the occasion. "I'm British, I know how to queue," he jokes.
But there's no joking about the long lines in the National Health Service (NHS), the U.K'.s agency overseeing its socialized medicine programs. The lines are so long they're killing people.
"8 million people in the United Kingdom are waiting for their care, with 40 percent waiting for more than 18 weeks," reports The Hill. "An incredible 14,000 people died just last year while waiting for care in England's emergency rooms."
And thanks to the new trade deal that President Donald Trump negotiated with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, those lines should start to shrink. The historic agreement offers a host of benefits, namely:
- More than $700 million in ethanol exports and $250 million in other agricultural products, like beef.
- Committing the two countries to enhancing industrial and agricultural market access.
- Closing loopholes and increasing U.S. firms' competitiveness in the U.K.'s procurement market.
- Streamlined customs procedures for U.S. exports.
- Securing the supply chain of U.S. aerospace manufacturers through preferential access to U.K. aerospace components.
But opening access to life-saving American medicine will help our friends like Arthur Dent. While some critics insist the deal's health care provisions will result in patients having less access to life-saving drugs, the opposite is true.
Indeed, "NHS patients have been given new hope of accessing wonder drugs previously blocked in Britain as Donald Trump pressures the health service to spend more with US suppliers," as The Telegraph recently reported. As part of the deal, the Trump administration insisted that the UK needed to be more welcoming of imports from U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
Under this new trade agreement, the U.K. government agreed to review the rules that dictate which drugs can be bought. And those imports can't come soon enough. In its wisdom, the NHS has blocked myriad American wonder drugs, including some that effectively combat Alzheimer's disease and breast cancer.
But this is just one of many problems facing Britain's beleaguered NHS. In an open letter to the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, one MP started a report saying the agency was in "serious trouble" and ended it saying it was in "critical condition."
Overwhelming reports have found that British patients must ration their own pharmaceuticals because the government can't possibly afford enough. This could be why the UK's cancer survival rates are among the world's worst.
A few years ago, the U.K.'s Daily Mail hung a lantern on this reality in an article about cystic fibrosis. The drug killed Briton Elliott Usher at age 30 because the NHS went with a "bargain bucket deal" for weak drugs instead of powerful American ones.
At the time, the NHS hadn't approved the American-developed Trikafta, which created "near-miraculous results in US patients who were sharing their inspiring stories on social media."
All this from an agency whose budget is out of control. Total spending is £188.5 billion (that's about $257.5 billion today), for a country whose population is just less than 70 million. Spending just on disability benefits (£77.6 billion) is more than the country spends on national defense (£60.3 billion)!
This trade deal won't fix all the problems with the NHS. But it will help a lot. American medical innovations power the world's health, and the better access anyone has to U.S. medicine, the better off they will be.
One hopes that within a few years, the phrase, "I'm British, I know how to queue," will be long forgotten.
Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the US Senate, White House, and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai, and in 2024 he won the Top of the Rockies best columnist award. Read Jared Whitley's Reports — More Here.
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