Helped by the government’s strategy of printing money, speculators are targetting the import and export of medicines – and the NHS is losing out…
Running out of drugs
WORKERS, JULY 2009 ISSUE
Britain’s National Health Service is beginning to experience a shortage of drugs as one of the effects of the capitalist recession.
The shortage has developed with the weakening of the pound sterling as the government has taken on massive debt and started to print money. It looks as though one of the effects is that speculators are now targeting British pharmaceutical supplies for export to more lucrative markets. Also it seems that there has been a dramatic slow down in the import of cut-price branded drugs into Britain.
Apparently when the pound was strong, “parallel traders” could buy drugs in Europe and sell them in Britain at a profit. There is evidence that these traders are now attempting to buy up British supplies, re-package them and export them at a profit to Scandinavia and Germany.
Waiting for medicine
Drug manufacturers and wholesalers have begun re-listing the quantity of drugs each British pharmacist, GP and hospital dispensary can buy. Pharmacists report that in some cases patients have had to wait days for drugs that have never before been in short supply. Apparently the change in this market could also lead to higher costs for the NHS as pharmacists attempt to recoup the loss of earnings.
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| Drug wholesalers are warning Britain could become “the new Greece” |
These parallel traders want to import drugs into countries with relatively strong currencies that were originally manufactured, packaged and priced to sell in another country. To do so in Britain they must then apply for a licence to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
The latest data from that agency shows a 60 per cent drop in the number of applications from November 2007 to November 2008. This is apparently because a fall in the pound has made a lot of products “invaluable for importation” in the twisted jargon of the profiteers.
It is said that these “parallel traders” are generally only interested in importing drugs where there used to be a 20 per cent difference between what they paid and what they could sell them for. The pound has fallen by more then 20 per cent in the last twelve months, wiping out much of that potential profit.
Parallel trading is extremely controversial, but not very well known. There have been claims that it has already caused drug shortages in countries such as Greece and Spain, which have been targeted by traders wanting to source low cost drugs. It is a sign of the depth of the British recession that the executive director of the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers recently warned that there was a danger that Britain could become “the new Greece, or the new Spain”.
In the midst of this situation British exports of pharmaceuticals appear to be increasing, again to make use of the differences in price due to currency movements. Indeed there was a 33 per cent increase between May and June in 2008 for precisely this reason, and this produced an export figure 51 per cent higher then in 2007.
All this taken together proves something that we already should know – capitalism is bad for Britain. We might not have known that it was bad for the pharmaceutical industry but now we do. There is already a list of drugs dangerously close to being in short supply and these are needed for medical conditions ranging from hypertension and kidney problems through to transplant patients, seizures, obesity and bipolar disorder.
In order to ensure that we safeguard the future supply of pharmaceuticals we need, we will have to ensure self-sufficiency in drug supply, as in so many other areas of life.