Abstract
One of the key tenets of the Progressive Trade Policy agenda (PTA), set forth in the Canadian government’s Report of the Standing Committee on International Trade on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was the safeguarding of the national government’s rights to regulate in the area of public services, including health services. However, the extent to which such an agenda protects public health care provision is far from certain. While the internationalization of health services has the potential to increase the supply of health services worldwide, a lack of global governance mechanisms to protect the health, and failure to take into account the risks to public health of the internationalization of health services may be highly detrimental to the health of trading nations. This paper draws on theoretical and empirical insights from both health policy research and international political science to analyze the potential effects of further trade openness on public healthcare provision in Canada and the UK.
Highlights
51 Comprehensive trade and investment agreements have been seen as essential to advancing the globalization of healthcare. Such deals starting with the GATS and furthered by the recent comprehensive agreements such as CETA have already enabled the commodification of healthcare sectors around the world, but sufficient measures have not been taken to inform and involve locally affected populations and supranational regional bodies of the dangers
52 Beyond the specific risks posed by ISDS, the extension of IPR in PTAs and other trade and investment deals, the crowding out of the public sector by the increasing scope for public sector consultants to work towards supplying healthcare to the international market should be taken seriously
53 The key risks of furthering trade in health services, whether it be in the public or private domain, are a resulting two-tier health system, disincentives for practitioners to engage in the public sector, and, a move towards the private sector
Summary
ISBN: 1710-7377 ISSN: 1710-7377 Publisher Association d’Économie Politique. Electronic reference Louise Dalingwater, “Public Healthcare and the Limits to a Canadian-Style Inclusive Trade Agenda ”, Revue Interventions économiques [Online], 65 | 2021, Online since 01 December 2020, connection on 07 February 2021. This text was automatically generated on 7 February 2021. Les contenus de la revue Interventions économiques sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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