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Tariffs, Taxes, and Trade-Offs: Can Raising Taxes in the UK Get You Cheaper Drugs in the US?
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Released: December 18, 2025

John Marshall
John Marshall, MD
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Tariffs, Taxes, and Trade-Offs: Can Raising Taxes in the UK Get You Cheaper Drugs in the US?

 

John Marshall, MD: John Marshall for Oncology Unscripted. There's been all sorts of stuff going on out there in healthcare—in the business of healthcare—and a recent article that was just published in The New York Times told us something about the relationship between the National Health Service, how patients get access to drugs there in Great Britain, and our relationship with them and the tariffs. You're like, how could the tariffs have anything to do with the National Health Service?

 

Well, let me give you a very short little background, if you don't know already, on the National Health Service—Britain’s public health system. The Brits love it. It's tax-based. It's not fancy, it's not frilly. But if we're going to bring in some new medicine or some new expensive therapy—whatever it is—the budget has to be balanced.So, either they have to remove something from what the patients have access to, or they have to raise taxes. And there is a committee known as the NICE committee, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence—staffed by physicians that, in fact, governs that.

 

You're thinking, where is Marshall going with this?Well, where he is going—and The New York Times presented this—is that because of the tariffs, right? Britain makes some drugs, and we import them here and use them. Well, if the tariffs are in place, those drugs will be more expensive to import. And the whole idea behind the tariffs is to make it so that more Americans are doing the manufacturing.

 

Well, the Trump administration and the National Health Service just made a new deal where the Brits will get access to more drugs—so they'll raise their expenses, if you will. And it's going to hit the bottom line over there...because they're going to have access to medicines that they don’t currently have access to. In exchange, the U.S. is going to say, “Well, we'll waive those tariffs on drugs you import.” So, it is access over here for an economic change—an international economic change—around the tariffs.

 

I have no idea how this is going to work out. I didn’t really understand all the math—were taxes going to go up in Great Britain? Were they going to call it a wash because the tariffs were not going to be in place? I don’t know.

 

The good thing for patients in the UK is that they're going to have more access to more medicines. What I worry about is that it'll come on the backs of either going into debt—if the National Health Service goes into more debt, sort of like our healthcare system—or, in fact, they raise taxes, or somehow they magically make the budgets balance.

 

So, we need to look ahead to 2026 and see just what happens with this UK National Health Service–Trump tariff deal that was just reported in The New York Times.

 

Stay tuned here for more updates on Oncology Unscripted.