Trade Deal Targets Medicare, New Leak Reveals [View all]

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Trade Deal Targets Medicare, New Leak Reveals

For the second time in a week, Medicare is complicating an already fraught debate over the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

A recent draft of the health care transparency section of TPP released by Wikileaks on Wednesday reveals the deal would make Medicare vulnerable to legal challenges from pharmaceutical companies and jeopardize future attempts by the insurer to negotiate lower drug prices.

In a modest victory for global health care advocates, however, the leaked draft does not contain previous language explicitly protecting prescription drug prices from being marked down by government insurers.


“The language previously was a little more specifically designed to attack the reimbursement rates” of government drug insurance programs, Maybarduk told The Huffington Post. “Now it is more about process rather than outcomes,” but the intent to undermine government drug price negotiation remains the same.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/10/tpp-medicare-leak_n_7555232.html