Tuesday, 10 December 2013

TPP looks stalled

As Obama tries to export US social failure in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, using high intensity tactics as head of the negotiations to get an agreement by years end, it's looking to me like the whole think is stuck. And for little wonder that nobody wants to import the capitalist disaster that is the US pharmaceutical system. Even though he used our foreign systems as part of Obamacare:
Also according to the December memo, the U.S. has reintroduced a proposal that would hamper government health services from negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. The proposal appears to have been universally rejected earlier in the talks, according to the memo. 
Australia and New Zealand have medical boards that allow the government to reject expensive new drugs for the public health system, or negotiate lower prices with drug companies that own patents on them. If a new drug does not offer sufficient benefits over existing generic drugs, the boards can reject spending taxpayer money on the new medicines. They can also refuse to pay high prices for new drugs. The Obama administration has been pushing to ban these activities by national boards, which would lock in big profits for U.S. drug companies. Obamacare sought to mimic the behavior of these boards to lower domestic health care costs by granting new flexibilities to U.S. state agencies for determining drug prices. more
Well surprise surprise, the US pharmaceutical nightmare is so fucked up that nobody wants a bar of it. 

So this is how it goes; Obama looks to Australia and New Zealand to give power to state boards over medication pricing, then he wants us to live under a TPP which would undermine our national boards that negotiate our medication prices on our behalf. He wants our system and also wants to wreck it. As if anybody in NZ or Australia in their right mind would agree to something so incredibly preposterous and blatantly not in the interests of our own people/national interest. Does Obama think we're all morons down here? And why is he pushing this so hard to get an agreement? Is he so blind and arrogant as to think his capitalist multinational controlled economy is something worth exporting to us? Ack, we done want a bar of it.

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