Yes really:
To start with - Neither of the articles links you gave me has anything to do with doctors being bribed to give the covid shots – which is the subject of this forum.
Also, your Reuters article is slightly muddled in that it talks predominately about the USA, but then throws in a facts in about the NHS that are not directly related.
Your Guardian article could be misread if you only read the first few paragraphs, and not the whole article, and also if you’re not aware of how the NHS functions (which as an American you wouldn’t be).
I’ll first cover the ‘sunshine rule’ before going into detail about the heart of the issue. The sunshine rule mentioned in the article is a distraction from the facts in that it is just a trivial matter that has nothing to do with the main article, and as a public employee NHS have always been under the same rules of all UK government employees in that receiving ‘gifts’ and ‘hospitality’ from the private sector has always been legally classified as ‘bribery and corruption’; which is why as a civil servant I could only receive small items like a calendar or pen, and only if such items were clearly marked with the Companies Logo. All that the sunshine rule does is to introduce a ‘register’ into the NHS whereby NHS declares that they’ve received such gifts – just like MPs the ‘register of interests’ in Parliament.
Getting onto the main points: Unlike the USA, in the UK:-
• Doctors and pharmacists in the UK are government employees, and as such don’t handle any money or drugs directly.
• NHS Doctors and pharmacists are paid directly by the government, as government employees.
• It’s not the doctors who pay any of the bills for the premises, equipment or drugs; all that is paid by the government – and each NHS Practice or Hospital have Admin teams to deal with that sort of thing. Before my wife retired from the NHS she worked in such an Admin team.
Also, unlike the USA, in the UK:-
• NHS doctors, even senior hospital doctors (Consultants), have no authority to procure (buy) drugs; and any drugs they prescribe to patients has to be approved and issued by their NHS pharmacist – for example:
After spending three weeks in hospital a few years ago, the hospital doctor (Consultant) wanted to prescribe about a dozen different drugs to aid my recover, but I had to wait a couple of hours before my wife could take me home, to give time for the NHS hospital pharmacist to approve my prescription - it’s a system of ‘double check’ to reduce the risk of errors or mistakes e.g. as well as the doctors, the pharmacists also have access to the patients’ medical records so that they can double check that the combination of drugs the doctor is prescribing to you are likely to be safe for you (the individual).
After about a year of treatment my NHS hospital Consultant (doctor) was able to take me off most of the drugs as I got better; leaving just about 3 when I was finally discharged from hospital aftercare e.g. the NHS hospital handing my care back to the my local doctor. And another year later (once I’d made a near full recover), it wasn’t my local NHS doctor who took my off the rest of the drugs, it was my local NHS’s doctor’s pharmacist who phoned me up, and after a chat with her over the phone, she decided (not my doctor) that I no longer needed the drugs (medication).
NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence)
In the UK, unlike the USA, the NHS has no authority to choose what drugs to buy from Pharmaceutical companies; it’s NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) that has that power. NICE is an independent Government Department that decides what drugs the NHS can and can’t use, and it’s NICE that negotiates the purchase of such drugs with Pharmaceutical companies (on behalf of the NHS) – and with a customer base of over 66 million, NICE has a lot of negotiation power, and is a tough negotiator; and therefore almost always gets generous discounts on the price of drugs from Pharmaceutical companies e.g. the cost of drugs for the NHS from Pharmaceutical companies is a lot cheaper than the Pharmaceutical companies charge USA doctors and hospitals.
How NICE makes decisions: https://youtu.be/z5k5JWmR4Hc
WHO Then GETS THE £40 MILLION PER YEAR?
Individual NHS doctors are not paid the £40 million into their personal bank accounts (that would be bribery and corruption – which is a serious criminal offence), and as government employees individual doctors don’t have anything to do with the finances (that’s done by NHS Admin teams).
If you actually read the ‘entire’ Guardian article (and not just the opening paragraphs), it does make it quite clear further down the article that Pharmaceutical companies are keen to finance clinical trials of new drugs in the NHS, and even supply the drugs free for the clinical trials (that’s where the £40 million per year goes).
It’s in the interests of Pharmaceutical companies to finance trials in the NHS and supply the drugs for free for the trials; because if the trials are successful, then it’s solid evidence which the Pharmaceutical companies can present to NICE to try to encourage NICE to allow the drug to be approved for use in the NHS, which with a 66 million customer base is a lucrative market for any drug that NICE approves.
In NHS trials, it’s not doctors that run individual clinical trials; it’s NHS hospitals that partnership with universities (in their local area) to do the medical research jointly. The NHS hospital where my wife worked in Admin (the BRI) is in partnership with Bristol University for research and training; and so my wife (as an Admin worker within the NHS) did do some of the admin on various NHS/University clinical trials – The Bristol Stool Chart (which is now used worldwide) being one of the joint NHS/University research projects that my wife’s boss (a doctor) was proud to be involved in developing.
What is the Bristol Stool Chart? https://youtu.be/hCTuV-pltfc
