Group items tagged

byRobert Reich

If you haven’t heard much about the TPP, that’s part of the problem right there. It would be the largest trade deal in history — involving countries stretching from Chile to Japan, representing 792 million people and accounting for 40 percent of the world economy – yet it’s been devised in secret.

What’s been leaked about it so far reveals, for example, that the pharmaceutical industry gets stronger patent protections, delaying cheaper generic versions of drugs. That will be a good deal for Big Pharma but not necessarily for the inhabitants of developing nations who won’t get certain life-saving drugs at a cost they can afford.

Broadcast Journalist Edward R. Murrow in 1955: Who owns the patent on this vaccine? Polio Researcher Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? We don't hear much of that anymore. The public-minded sentiment of the 1950s, with the sense of wartime cooperation still in the minds of researchers and innovators, has yielded to the neoliberal winner-take-all business model. 

In his most recent exposé of the health care industry in the U.S., Steve Brill notes that it's "the only industry in which technological advances have increased costs instead of lowering them." An investigation of fourteen private hospitals by National Nurses United found that they realized a 1,000% markup on their total costs, four times that of public hospitals. Other sources have found that private health insurance administrative costs are 5 to 6 times higher than Medicare administrative costs. Markup reached 100,000% for the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, which grabbed a patent for a new hepatitis drug and set the pricing to take whatever they could get from desperate American patients.

The first is funding for the care of patients at home.

The Liberals promised to negotiate a new health accord with the provinces and have committed $3 billion to home care specifically.

They plan to make it easier to find and cheaper to hire home care professionals, but also promise to extend EI benefits to family members who decide to stay home to care for loved ones themselves.

The next is the Liberal commitment to help coordinate bulk prescription drug purchases by the provinces.

Although this isn’t as good as a national pharma care plan, it will go a long way to reducing the costs of drugs for provinces, which should free up money for other health areas.

The third is allowing scientists to freely share their findings with the public.

Fourth is restoring the long-form mandatory census, which was eliminated in 2010.

Last is the Liberal promise to regulate trans fats