TPP Would Restrict Access to Affordable Medicines, Top Dem Says

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/30452-tpp-would-restrict-access-to-affordable-medicines-top-dem-says


In an op-ed Thursday, Levin raised concerns that the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which the U.S. is negotiating, will curtail access to generic drugs.

“Is TPP the most progressive trade agreement in history?” Levin wrote in The Huffington Post, referring to a claim made by President Obama, who backs the emerging deal. “Not if you need access to affordable medicines.”

House Democratic leadership met earlier on Wednesday and decided they will all back Levin’s substitute amendment, according to a Pelosi spokesman.

“The leaders agreed to all support the Levin substitute in an effort to try to improve the TPA bill,” the aide said.

Levin, the House Ways and Means Committee’s ranking member, is staunchly opposed to the fast-track bill backed by the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

He argued the deal would leave Congress without a meaningful role in negotiating the Latin American-Pacific Rim trade deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“That is not the way to get TPP right, which I want. It is not the way to get a TPP with broad bipartisan support,” Levin said.

[delrem]

1. This ought all to have been openly debated over the entire 8 yrs of Obama's term.

There's something wrong that it's dumped on us at the end of negotiations.

This discussion never took place.

[Art_from_Ark]

2. I heard the same thing at an event here in Japan

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026753877

Prices for prescription drugs here are still pretty reasonable. But under TPP, it will take much longer for generics to become available, and prices for some prescriptions could go up dramatically.

[delrem]

3. I'm wondering whether gov'ts will be proscribed from issuing generics,

in universal health care programs, just to satisfy the profit hungry US Americans who wouldn't know what a "universal health care program" was if it bit them in the ass.

[Art_from_Ark]

5. From what I've read and heard so far here in Japan,

that seems to be the case.

[delrem]

6. If it can't be killed in the US, and it doesn't seem likely,

perhaps it can be killed elsewhere.

[AgingAmerican]

4. It also creates corporate tribunals that can override US law

And environmental regulations.

TPP is fascism.

[Unknown Beatle]

7. Well, that does it then,

if Paul Ryan is for it, then I'm most definitely against it even more now.