Rep. Sander Levin: TPP Jacks up Everyone's Drug Costs

In a Huffington Post Op-Ed, Rep. Sander Levin wrote that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will roll back gains made in making medicine affordable in this country and significantly increasing the cost of medicine in the developing world.

Intellectual Property provisions in the deal, that the U.S. is negotiating with mostly Pacific Rim nations, will protect future profits of drug companies at the expense of everyone else by extending drug patents and preventing low cost generics from being manufactured.

"In 2007, House Democrats insisted on changes to four pending trade agreements with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Those changes, among other things, created the most progressive medicines provisions in U.S. trade agreements. Unfortunately, TPP is currently failing to live up to that standard," Levin (D-MI 9th District) wrote.

"Generic medicines can improve access by dramatically lowering costs," he continued. "For example, a decade ago, a year of antiretroviral treatment for HIV infections cost approximately $10,000 – roughly two or three times the per capita income in Peru. Once generic alternatives became available, the average cost of treatment dropped dramatically. Today, the cost can be as low as $200 per patient in developing nations with access to these low-cost generic drugs."

Levin recognized that "pharmaceutical companies need incentives to invest in the research and development necessary to develop innovative products" because "[t]here would not be a generic version of a medicine if an innovative drug company did not first develop a patented version of the product. Innovative drug companies are responsible for extraordinary advances in public health."

However, he said, "U.S. negotiators in TPP are attempting to roll back some of these provisions and to introduce still further protections for patent applicants or patent holders, at the expense of access to medicines."

Continue reading the rest of the article here: Is TPP the Most Progressive Trade Agreement in History? Not If You Need Access to Affordable Medicines.