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Leaked documents from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) show giant drug companies are trying to control the price of their products and deprive New Zealanders of access to cheaper medicines, opponents say.
Three secret US-proposed texts from the TPP negotiations in Lima, Peru, were leaked and posted, along with critiques, on the Citizen Trade Campaign website today.
The TPP is a regional trade agreement being knocked up between New Zealand, the US, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
The combined effect of the three leaked texts gave big pharmaceutical companies "a platform to wage a war of harassment against Pharmac", said agreement opponent, University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey.
Pharmac is the government agency which buys drugs into the country, and can negotiate with drug companies to get better prices.
"The US proposals would allow drug companies to challenge every Pharmac decision as not appropriately recognising the 'value' of patents - a dangerous and undefined standard," Kelsey said.
"Adopting this standard would open floodgates of litigation against Pharmac and will ultimately raise medicine prices and ration access."
Kelsey said the secret TPP negotiations were dangerous because they gave foreign corporations enormous leverage over democratic processes and threatened the viability of the country's health care system.
American legal expert Professor Sean Flynn said the US proposal on transparency - that targets drug pricing and reimbursement programs - would regulate public health policy and had no place in a trade negotiation.
"If such an agreement is desired by countries, it should be negotiated in an open forum where public health experts and advocates are well represented.
"This proposal is contrary to the demands of democracy, is bad for the development interests of poorer countries, and represents an affront to the best practices in evidence-based health policy."
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