19 health groups have co-authored a letter sent to new Makerfield MP and likely-PM Andy Burnham to urge him to scrap a terrible agreement made with Trump which could see almost 230k preventable deaths.
The new deal will divert £44.7bn from essential health services to cover the cost of new medicines, which comes as a huge boon for greedy Big Pharma and a foreboding death knell for hundreds of thousands of British citizens.
Academics from the University of York, Liverpool and Christchurch hospital in New Zealand have found that this level of reduction in NHS spending to foot the bill for inflated drug prices could lead to the deaths of 229k by 2036.
This letter comes as one of the first real tests to Burnham’s political resolve and whether he will stick up for the future of the NHS in the face of big bully Trump in the USA pressing for advantageous deals that work for him and his pals.
The UK-US pharma deal with Trump will cost 229,000 lives in England.
The deal is so bad that the editor of the British Medical Journal says it suggests "We’ll kill our poor people to make your rich companies richer”.
Dear @andyburnham, tear up this deal as Prime Minister.… pic.twitter.com/5HF3HTQrsR
— We Own It (@We_OwnIt) July 8, 2026
Big Pharma are ripping us off — Burnham must stop it before people die
This critical intervention comes as we approach the 78th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, which has seen the health service and its staff transform healthcare in the UK and has “saved and transformed countless lives, through providing quality healthcare free at the point of use”.
However, many politicians have sold out to private interests when in office, giving lucrative contracts and deals which have been a significant financial burden on the NHS and has increased its costs through Labour’s PFI deals, which have resulted in the state effectively paying exorbitant rents on its health infrastructure.
Now, Big Pharma is going for the goalposts and Starmer appeared to be more than happy to make it easy for them, signing an agreement to take healthcare away from us to ensure the profits of a small minority in the US — or more likely, living in offshore tax havens.
Many have raised alarm about this for months, like the director of Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden, who has spoken to us numerous times on this huge threat to the lives of Brits:
View this post on Instagram
“Last chance to save the NHS,” say doctors and health groups
The letter, co-signed by Medact, the Doctors’ Association UK and Doctors in Unite amongst others, also refers to Burnham’s previous time in cabinet as Health Secretary in an attempt to hold him to his word, writing:
In 2012, reflecting on your time as Health Secretary, you argued that past Labour governments had gone too far in privatising the NHS and that the coalition were going further and faster down that path.
The current government has kept on that road. But there is now an urgent opportunity to right the wrongs of the past 15 years and more.
Following your decisive victory in Makerfield, you said that this is the Labour Party’s “final chance to change”.
This is also the Labour Party’s final chance to save our NHS.
In order to save the NHS from Trump’s US-first exploitative profiteering efforts, they make three requests to Burnham:
● Commit to rethinking the dangerous US-UK deal on pharmaceuticals, the new PFI arrangements for neighbourhood health centres, job cuts underway in
hospitals across England, increases in the use of private providers in community diagnostics and other areas, and the Palantir FDP contract
● Meet with our coalition of workers and patients before the end of the summer recess to discuss the changes needed to restore the NHS
● Set out a clear timetable to take NHS services and care back into the public sector over the next 7 years
Co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a retired consultant paediatrician, Dr Tony O’Sullivan, told the Guardian that “the NHS is already on life support” and that “handing over billions more to US pharmaceutical giants is like trying to put out a fire while pouring petrol on the flames”, adding:
Every year, around 16,000 people die unnecessarily because of delays in emergency care, maternity services continue to fail families, and millions are stuck on waiting lists.
The last thing the NHS needs is to be forced to bankroll bigger profits for multinational drug companies.
View this post on Instagram
Burnham urged to “chart another course” to those who sold off NHS
The letter from the health groups, with support also from the Fire Brigades Union and Disabled People Against the Cuts, finished with a plea to Burnham:
As health campaigning groups and trade unions, we urge you to chart a different course to your predecessors and prioritise investing in our NHS as a public service, so that we can celebrate decades more birthdays yet to come.
With conflicting reports over Burnham’s position on genocide-enabling spy-tech firm Palantir and its growing foothold in our NHS, it’s anyone’s guess which way he’ll jump.
That’s exactly why the pressure can’t let up. Burnham needs to know that every decision he makes comes with a real human cost.
Whether the “King of the North” actually cares is another matter.
Featured image via the Canary
From Canary via This RSS Feed.