Bolstering long-held criticisms from public interest groups, newly leaked sections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) show how Big Pharma is employing “an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism” to increase profits at the expense of global health.

The TPP’s “Healthcare Annex”—which seeks to regulate government policies around medicines and medical devices—would give big pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine while crippling public healthcare programs around the world and “tying the hands” of the U.S. Congress in its ability to pursue Medicare reform and lower drug costs. 

“The Great Treaty is taking shape in complete secrecy, because along with its undebated geostrategic ambitions it locks into place an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism for which there is little public support.”
—Julian Assange, WikiLeaksIn a scathing analysis of the leaked text, which was published Wednesday by WikiLeaks, Australian public health expert Deborah Gleeson declares:

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The TPP, currently being negotiated behind closed doors, would link the United States with Pacific Rim countries from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia into a new regimen of so-called “free trade” rules that would cover 40 percent of the global economy.

“The leak is just the latest glaring example of why fast-tracking the TPP would undermine the health of Americans and the other countries and cost our government more, all to the benefit of pharma’s profits.”
— Lori Wallach, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

President Barack Obama is trying to gain Fast Track approval from the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, having already obtained it from the Senate, which would grant him increased power to push the TPP and other mammoth trade pacts through Congress.

Public health groups have long been part of the coalition of TPP opponents, charging that it would undermine efforts to ensure access to affordable, life-saving medicines in both the United States and abroad.

Wednesday’s leak appears to bolster those claims.

According to the New York Times, which obtained the Healthcare Annex in collaboration with WikiLeaks, the document provides pharmaceutical companies with “new opportunities to challenge the decisions of trading partners on which drugs they will offer their citizens through government health care programs and the rates at which they will reimburse drug sellers.”