2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Do you have a medical diagnosis of any illness or problem? Heart disease? Diabetes? [View all]Baobab
(4,667 posts)rolled back? WTF?
Yes, in 1994 we signed on to the WTO GATS which committed our health insurance industry to GATS disciplines. And in 1998 an annex to the GATS that contained a standstill clause was added to it. What that means is that the minute it becomes world trade the WTO has the final say on anything and everything related to anything covered by GATS which is basically everything of economic importance that might effect profitability. The WTO views regulation as bad and pushes for deregulation of everything. Which would mean the rolling back of restrictions on what insurance companies have to do, allowing them to dump sicker people, since they are less profitable. Also, limits on their profitability would likely be rolled back. Also, once it becomes world trade, single payer becomes forever impossible, unless we pay a compensation in free money that would literally be a kings ransom, in lost expected future profits, we become locked in to the private for profit system forever, barring some huge multi trillion dollar bailout for foreign firms effected. (as currently no foreign firms are involved yet we need to withdraw from this deal or insert broad carve outs preventing this now!)
The paper in my .sig explains the rest. Its not a good situation. So we need to vote for Bernie because Hillary is already committed to this globalization agenda because of her husband's signature and US trade policy of pushing it, over the last 20 years of negotiations.Those negotiations are over economic integration, basically allowing developing countries to participate in our service markets as if they were American companies but without the higher costs.
Health insurance and medical care are both services, even if delivered across international borders, insurance is committed unambiguously as a service, so is nursing, medicine, teaching, IT, construction, staffing, etc.
the new TiSA agreement is almost finished in Geneva after 10 years of negotiations.