Stiglitz: Don't Trade Away Our Health (tpp)

[Faryn Balyncd]

Don't Trade Away Our Health

By Joseph E. Stiglitz


A secretive group met behind closed doors in New York this week. What they decided may lead to higher drug prices for you and hundreds of millions around the world. Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries convened to decide the future of their trade relations in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.). Powerful companies appear to have been given influence over the proceedings, even as full access is withheld from many government officials from the partnership countries. Among the topics negotiators have considered are some of the most contentious T.P.P. provisions — those relating to intellectual property rights. And we’re not talking just about music downloads and pirated DVDs. These rules could help big pharmaceutical companies maintain or increase their monopoly profits on brand-name drugs. . . . . . The secrecy of the T.P.P. negotiations makes them maddeningly opaque and hard to discuss. But we can get a pretty good idea of what’s happening, based on documents obtained by WikiLeaks from past meetings (they began in 2010), what we know of American influence in other trade agreements, and what others and myself have gleaned from talking to negotiators.

Americans might shrug at the prospect of soaring drug prices around the world. After all, the United States already allows drug companies to charge what they want. But that doesn’t mean we might not want to change things someday. Here again, the T.P.P. has us cornered: Trade agreements, and in particular individual provisions within them, are typically far more difficult to alter or repeal than domestic laws. . . . . . .We can’t be sure which of these features have made it through this week’s negotiations. What’s clear is that the overall thrust of the intellectual property section of the T.P.P. is for less competition and higher drug prices. The effects will go beyond the 12 T.P.P. countries. Barriers to generics in the Pacific will put pressure on producers of such drugs in other countries, like India, as well.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies claim they need to charge high prices to fund their research and development. This just isn’t so. For one thing, drug companies spend more on marketing and advertising than on new ideas. Overly restrictive intellectual property rights actually slow new discoveries, by making it more difficult for scientists to build on the research of others and by choking off the exchange of ideas that is critical to innovation. As it is, most of the important innovations come out of our universities and research centers, like the National Institutes of Health, funded by government and foundations. The efforts to raise drug prices in the T.P.P. take us in the wrong direction. The whole world may come to pay a price in the form of worse health and unnecessary deaths.



Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is the author of “The Price of Inequality.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/opinion/dont-trade-away-our-health.html

[JDPriestly]

1. K&R.

[merrily]

2. Opposing TPP: Stiglitz, Sanders, Warren, 151 House Dems and others

Names of the 151 Dems, including Grayson, Kennedy, Lee (who alone in the House knew to vote against the invasion of Iraq), Waters and many others

http://delauro.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1455:delauro-miller-lead-151-house-dems-telling-president-they-will-not-support-outdated-fast-track-for-trans-pacific-partnership&Itemid=21

Sanders

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-tpp-trade-deal-a-disaster

Warren (who also opposed nomination of Froman)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-other-democrats-raise-concerns-about-free-trade-pact-with-asia/2014/12/17/19de1c48-8632-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html

Other Senators from the Dem Caucus raising concerns over TPP in a letter to Reid (in addition to Sanders and Warren): Baldwin, Blumenthal, Franken, Harkin, Levin, Markey (making it unanimous among Massachusetts' Senators), Merkley, Murphy, Reed and Whitehouse.

That's a dozen from the Dem Caucus of the US Senate.

Reich and Krugman have had reservations as well. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/21/1359292/-TPP-Obama-against-Warren-Reich-Baker-Krugman-but-with-GOP#

I'm sold.

[djean111]

3. Looks like the most enthusiastic folks are Obama, Hillary - AND THE GOP.

I will certainly remember this when it comes time to vote.

[LWolf]

5. That's telling, isn't it? nt

[merrily]

6. When it comes time to vote against Hillary in the Democratic Presidential primary, yes.

My rep and both my Senators oppose the TPP. (I did not do a name for name check on the House list, but, at a glance, it looks as though the entire Massachusetts delegation opposes it.)

Obama is not running again; and I never vote for anyone in the GOP anyway.

So, for me, it comes down to Hills, for whom I had no intention of voting anyway.

[Jefferson23]

4. Highly recommend for the very good Joseph Stiglitz.n/t

[Octafish]

7. ''Stiglitz'' means ''Integrity.''

Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-goldman-sacked/

[woo me with science]

8. K&R

[jwirr]

9. K&R.

[QC]

10. His hair is on fire because he reads Huffington Post!

(Did I manage to work enough Turd Way clichés into that?)