Health care sellout on a global scale: Secret TPP trade deal to hand worldwide price monopoly to Big Pharma

(NaturalNews) It turns out that there is another globalist player at the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiating table – Big Pharma – and if things go the industry's way, all competition will be crushed, and the world will be at its mercy.

According to The New York Times, which cited newly leaked annex documents, the Obama Administration is no longer seeking protection for Big Pharma prices under the 12-nation deal, folding to pressure and resistance from the industry and the other nations involved in the talks. At the same time, U.S. negotiators are pressing negotiating partners to open up the process that establishes reimbursement rates for drugs and medical devices.

But the way the deal is being structured, the largest pharmaceutical firms will essentially be put in a position to destroy much of their competition, which is why public health officials, generic drug makers and others are opposing the deal. They "contend that it will empower big pharmaceutical firms to command higher reimbursement rates in the United States and abroad, at the expense of consumers," the paper reported, adding that the TPP could also expose international markets to direct-to-consumer advertising that Americans have suffered.

"It was very clear to everyone except the U.S. that the initial proposal wasn't about transparency; it was about getting market access for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them greater access to and influence over decision-making processes around pricing and reimbursement," Deborah Gleeson, a lecturer at the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University in Australia, who has seen the leaked document, told the Times. And despite the fact that it has been toned down somewhat, she still added, "I think it's a shame that the annex is still being considered at all for the T.P.P."

It's about profits, not "health"

Other opponents have said the Pharma annex, if allowed to stand, will permit Big Pharma giants – most of them based in the U.S. – to protect profits over the best interests of public health, especially in the poorest of countries where neither governments nor consumers can afford to pay what the West pays for medicines.

The agreement "will increase the cost of medicines worldwide, starting with the 12 countries that are negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership," Judit Rius Sanjuan, a lawyer at Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that provides medical care in more than 60 countries, told the Times.

But none of that seems to matter to the industry, which is taking its typical fall-back position: "We have to charge outrageous prices for our medicines because of all the time and money it takes to develop them" (all while earning record profits and receiving funding from taxpayers).

What's more, judging by the newly released annex, it appears as though U.S.-based Pharma companies are seeking to extend their monopolies around, so they can earn even more. After all, that's the modus operandi – keep people dependent on the industry for their "livelihood" as opposed to actually curing disease and alleviating suffering.

"Medical Mafia"

And of course, the drive is being supported at all levels of the federal government, especially at the "regulatory agencies" in charge of "overseeing" Big Pharma. That would be the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission, the former of which has gone to great lengths to bury data and obscure Big Pharma's misdeeds, and the latter of which punishes natural health advocates who champion alternative treatments for common ailments.

But few want to speak publicly about this collusion and corruption, which, as stated by then-Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who was running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination at the time, was akin to being "in bed together."

"The insurance companies and the drug companies, whether it's Democrats or Republicans reforming the medical care system, these corporations run the show," he said during a press conference. "You know, they support it, it's because the government doesn't take it over. It's the corporations that end up taking over. So, it's well intended but I think it always backfires on us and that the people we're wanting to regulate end up writing their own regulations."

Now we have TPP, the global expansion of the Medical Mafia.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

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