How Will Brexit Affect NHS?

This report discusses the negative impact of Brexit on the UK National Health Service (NHS), including staffing issues, access to treatment, funding, and more. It also explains the reason behind Brexit and society's views. The report concludes that Brexit may draw negative impacts on the youth and general people living in Britain and causing a major harm to NHS.

Running Head: BREXIT 1
How Will Brexit Affect NHS?
(Students Details)

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Executive Summary
The following report is about Britain exit and its issues related to NHS. Various issues are
described in the report, such as staffing issues, accessing treatment in UK and abroad, and
finance. The reason behind Brexit is also clearly mentioned by stating its factors. Politics and
policies have a major role to play in the economic development of the nations associated with
EU. The society has different views regarding Brexit, and their viewpoints have been highlighted
in the study.

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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Issues...........................................................................................................................................................4
Reason behind emergence of Brexit............................................................................................................5
Politics and policies relevant to social and health care................................................................................6
The views of the society about Brexit..........................................................................................................6
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References list.............................................................................................................................................9
Gibbs Reflective Cycle..............................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Brexit is used to describe “British exit”, it means the withdrawal of United Kingdom (UK) from
the European Union (EU). This decision was made on 23rd June 2016, in a referendum, in which
51.9 % voted to support the decision for leaving EU (Triggle, 2018). The Government implored
Article 50 on EU treaty and started a two-year process to leave EU. The due date to conclude this
with UK’s exit was 29th March 2019, but now the deadline has been extended to 31st October
2019. Both the left-wing and the right-wing Eurosceptic have supported the withdrawal, but pro-
Europeanists supported the continuation of membership to maintain the single market and
customs union system.
The Brexit has negatively impacted UK healthcare and services. This paper is written is to have a
relevant understanding of economic policies and politics impact over healthcare. The reason to
choose this topic is to understand the current scenario of UK healthcare with change of economic
conditions due to Brexit.
Issues
The British exit will cause a significant negative impact to the UK National Health Service
(NHS). It will have bad effects on the workforce of NHS, it's financing, vaccines, availability of
medicines and information sharing regarding the market research (Martill & Staiger, 2018). This
negotiated agreement is initiated by the EU and the UK Government but is not accepted by the
Parliament. It is considered that the impact of this agreement will bring many adverse results.
The issues that NHS will face due to Brexit are explained below:
1. Staffing issues
The policies framed under EU allowed the free movement and recognition of qualified
professionals within the European Union. After the Brexit movement, the staffs from EU will not
get such freedom and recognition in UK. The staffing process in NHS will be adversely affected
as NHS staffs are mostly recruited from the European countries (McKenna, 2016). Presently,
NHS is having trouble in recruiting and retaining permanent staffs. There is a total shortfall of
5.9% between the number of post and the staffs available for health care services in NHS.

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2. Accessing treatment in UK and abroad
The European Union increased the number of immigrants living in UK; more number of
immigrants means more number of patients needing NHS medical treatment. The average use of
services by the people of UK is lower than the services used by immigrants. The EU citizen
holds EHIC (European Health Insurance Card), which allows the temporary residents to access
medical treatment during their stay in any EEA country. Therefore, NHS could recover the
treatment cost from the visitor’s country under the agreement of reciprocal health care. As a
result of Brexit, the immigrants will stop visiting NHS for receiving health services.
3. Drugs and medical devices
Brexit will cause a problem related to marketing approvals and regulatory arrangement, due to
this UK will lose access to important networks, databases and approvals for free flow of drugs
and medicines between EU member countries and UK (Ishtm, 2019). There is a possibility that
UK will be given a less priority for producing new drugs, thus the patients will not get an
advantage of accessing certain drugs and medicines.
4. Funding and finance
Before Brexit, raising finance was easy for NHS; it got its funding from EU as UK was a part of
the membership. Since 2017 NHS leaders are facing problem in raising funds and has a lot of
financial pressure (Maddox, 2018). The performance of NHS against the key targets is totally
deteriorating. On long term basis, the NHS funding will influence the economy of UK. HM
treasury stated before the referendum, that the decision to leave EU will leave an immediate and
intense economic loss causing uncertainty and instability that will make UK permanently poor
(HealthEuropa, 2018).
Reason behind emergence of Brexit
The majority of UK citizens, that is, 51.9% voted for leaving EU. The main reason behind this
decision is Sovereignty and Immigration issues (Rogers, 2019). The citizens want that the
principle decisions related to UK should be decided and implemented by UK itself, and not by
EU. Prior to Brexit, people were asked to mention the problems that they are facing in their live;
they claimed that they were not satisfied by the decisions made by EU (Mouldin, 2016). They

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want their sovereignty back. Another reason is Immigration, voters thought that this is the best
chance to regain the control over borders and stop people from EU nations to move and reside
easily in Britain. Economic condition is another issue that forced the voters to go for exit EU. EU
failed to resolve the economic issues happening since 2008. Unemployment is an example of
economic issue in Britain.
Politics and policies relevant to social and health care
Since it is not sure that Brexit will be allowed or not, but this decision has negatively affected the
healthcare and social factors in the nation (Fahy, 2015). The Government has to clarify the
confusion going on regarding its intention to replace the regulations that were implemented
during the formulation of EU or should draft alternative policies that should be applied until the
decision of exit or stay as a member is announced. The Government has to frame new policies
regarding:
 Work time directives
 Procurement laws
 Regulations of medical devices and medicines
 Regulations to develop common professional standards between EEA countries for
medical education (McKenna, 2016)
The views of the society about Brexit
The views towards Brexit vary from person to person and their needs. 24% youth (age between
18-24 years) and 37% middle-aged (age between 25-49 years), 52% (age between 50-64 years)
and 61% (age 65+) support Brexit as they want anti-freedom of movement (Mejias & Banaji,
2019). From this finding, it can be stated that it is the youth of UK who has major concern with
the impact of no-deal agreement. The youth stated that by the launch of Brexit, they will lose the
automatic right of becoming a part of EU (Wheeler & Seddon, 2019). They will lose the
opportunity for getting valuable economical and educational opportunities in the context of
cultural exchange. They will lose the right to freely migrate to other EU countries for
employment purpose.

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The UK citizens have fear about getting permission for work visas to other European Union
nations (Hannan, 2016). They claimed that this doubt can be cleared only after the declaration of
negotiation outcomes. Other people discussed about the negative impact that will be caused to
loss of funds that EU provided, it will cause a variety of social loss and damage in UK (Mejias &
Banaji, 2019).
The role of agents and authority
The authorities that are helping people know on various developments in Brexit are:
HPRA published an updated report about the Brexit guidance document related to human
benefits and veterinary medicines. In the recent guidance document, all the important
information is incorporated in context of batch testing rules and how it will be reflected in
European Commission Q&A (HPRA, 2019). It also raised queries made by Brexit stakeholders.
Another agency working for providing a platform for general people to raise questions and get
answers related to Brexit is the European Medicines Agency. It publishes a document that
includes Q&A document for healthcare professionals, general public and patients. This agency
explained that if the agreement is withdrawn, then there will transformational periods in which
the European Union law will be still applicable to UK. This scenario explains that the supplies of
medicine will not be affected.

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Conclusion
The report concludes that Brexit may draw negative impacts on the youth and general people
living in Britain and causing a major harm to NHS. EU takes decisions for the member nations
and frames the laws that will bring benefit to all the members. But the previous years of this
agreement has not proved any benefit to the people of UK in terms of employment, social values,
or medical issues. Therefore, the Government decided to withdraw from EU and frame its own
laws and policies. The proposal is not allowed by the Parliament, and is causing fear to the
citizens of Britain and other nations as well; who are dependent on the frameworks of EU.

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References list
Fahy, N., 2015. How will Brexit affect health and health services in the UK? Evaluating three
possible scenarios. The Lancet, 390(10107), pp.2110-18.
Hannan, D., 2016. Why Vote Leave. London: Head of Zeus.
HealthEuropa, 2018. Brexit could break the NHS. [Online] Available at
https://www.healtheuropa.eu/brexit-nhs/88362/ [Accessed 20 July 2019].
HPRA, 2019. Brexit and the Regulation of Health Products – Latest Information. [Online]
Available at: http://www.hpra.ie/homepage/about-us/stakeholders/brexit/brexit---latest-
information [Accessed 22 July 2019].
Ishtm, 2019. Brexit will cause significant harm to the NHS, but No-Deal Brexit presents by far
the worst option. [Online] Available at: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2019/brexit-
will-cause-significant-harm-nhs-no-deal-brexit-presents-far-worst [Accessed 20 July 2019].
Maddox, C., 2018. Brexit and Procurement Law. London: Routledge.
Martill, B. & Staiger, U., 2018. Brexit and Beyond: Rethinking the Futures of Europe. London:
UCL Press.
McKenna, H., 2016. Five big issues for health and social care after the Brexit vote. [Online]
Available at: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/brexit-and-nhs [Accessed 20
July 2019].
Mejias, & Banaji, S., 2019. UK Youth Perspectives and Priorities for British Negotiations.
[Online] Available at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/ABetterBrexitforYoungPeople/A%20Better%20Brexit
%20for%20Young%20People.pdf [Accessed 20 July 2019].
Mouldin, J., 2016. 3 Reasons Brits Voted For Brexit. [Online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2016/07/05/3-reasons-brits-voted-for-brexit/
#f2dd881f9d6a [Accessed 20 July 2019].
Rogers, I., 2019. 9 Lessons in Brexit. London: Short Books.
Triggle, N., 2018. Six key questions Brexit poses for the NHS. [Online] Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46350966 [Accessed 20 July 2019].
Wheeler, B. & Seddon, P., 2019. Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU.
[Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887 [Accessed 20 July
2019].

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Gibbs Reflective Cycle
When I selected this topic my first approach was to understand the reasons of British exit from
EU framework as it is quite shocking to discontinue the membership of framework which is
appreciated in the whole world. This topic has helped me in understanding the economic impact
over healthcare policies and programs.
Brexit is the abbreviation of British exit from the strong group of 28 countries which is called
European Union. This decision was taken in a June 23, 2016 referendum which means all voting
ages an vote to decide whether the UK has to leave the European Union (EU) or not. The vote
has involved everyone and 51% vote for the motion and 49% voted against the decision. The
British exit is the big step in United Kingdom healthcare practices and social factors in the
nation. The Brexit can lead to arise of various issues in the economy. I have tried my best to
include all the major issues which UK is facing due to Brexit. The issues involved staffing
issues, access to medical treatment, Drugs and medical devices and pressure of fund and
finances.
It is evident that Brexit has impacted economic growth of the United Kingdom which has
directly impacted the National Health Services as discussed above. The major issue is sourcing
of finances due to British exit from European union has stopped the funding from EU
framework which has impacted the services of healthcare as well as social concerns. The
analysis helped me to understand the major reason of high voting in support of the decision is to
gain control. The UK citizen wants to reduce the immigrants settle in their country and they
always wanted to take all the decisions by themselves rather than European Union. The aim was
to enhance employment in the country as the country is not able to cope up since 2008 crisis. The
aim of European Union is to provide benefit to the people of UK in terms of social values,
economic welfare improve in employment and medical issues. I personally feel that the
agreement has failed in providing major impact to the above issues in recent years.
With the study of this project, I have given my best to understand the role of agents and
authorities in medical industry as well as the point of view of the society towards Brexit as a
whole. I have taken help of various secondary research methods to analyses the data, even I have
read various social blogs to understand the problems faced by the patients due to Brexit but what

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I feel that if I would have interacted more with different stakeholders personally. I would have
gained better analysis and real time impact of Brexit towards NHS. In future if I get this kind of
assignment I would try to use primary research and will provide better evaluation on the basis of
individual stakeholders which were impacted by Brexit. There are various aspects and
perspectives in making this decision as far as the economy is concerned the Brexit will
negatively impact the prices of the food due to low supply and in this condition it can be
assumed that people will compromise with medical facilities which is impacting NHS.