All the President's Trade Negotiators - Revolving Doors, Regulatory Capture, and Health Care Corporate Friendly Trade Agreements

This week's spectacle in Washington, DC was a nearly unanimous Democratic minority in the Senate blocking a proposal for expedited consideration of multinational trade agreements favored by the Republican majority, but also by the Democratic President and his trade negotiators (look here).  Democrats mainly based their actions on perceptions that the trade agreements favored multinational corporations  over people.While trade agreements may seem to be another, albeit international species of wonkery, these agreements could have major effects on patients' and the public's health.  Since these concerns have been essentially ignored by the US medical and health care literature, (although they have appeared in UK journals, Australian, and New Zealand journals in English), they I will discuss them below. Worthy of further discussion is the possibility that these potential threats to health care and public health may arise not just from ideological disagreements, but also from health care corporations' increasing capture of government, facilitated by the conflicts of interest generated by the revolving door.  Corporate Friendly Trade AgreementsThe US has been negotiating two major multinational trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic  Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) for years.  In a March, 2014, commentary, renowned economist Joseph E Stiglitz summarized the objections to the these proposed trade agreements...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: AbbeVie Abbott anechoic effect corporatism Eli Lilly global health health care prices Pfizer PhRMA regulatory capture revolving doors US Trade Representative Source Type: blogs