Nurses: Any Concessions on Higher Drug Prices, Provisions to Allow Corporations to Overturn Public Protections Unacceptable

National Nurses United today urged Congress members to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership final agreement, warning there remains inadequate guarantees to assure patients and consumers will not be harmed by pharmaceutical price gouging.

NNU, the nation’s largest organization of nurses, says it also opposes any trade agreement that permits transnational corporations to use extra-legal proceedings to overturn public laws and regulations, the Investor State Dispute Settlement corporate tribunals seen in prior trade deals.

The nurses said they are in full agreement with Sen. Bernie Sanders who said today, that “Wall Street and other big corporations have won again. It is time for the rest of us to stop letting multinational corporations rig the system to pad their profits at our expense.”

While full details of the final pact remain murky, “there is simply no basis for any concessions that give the pharmaceutical corporations a green light to continue pricing patients in the U.S. or other countries out of affordable medications,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN.

Recent outrage over the decision of one pharmaceutical CEO, Martin Shrkeli to jack up prices by 5,000 percent on Duraprim, an anti-infection drug critical for people with weakened immune systems, “symbolizes why we need to close down on the handouts to big pharma, not give them greater monopoly control over high prices,” Ross noted.

With profits for the five largest pharmaceutical corporations topping $56 billion last year alone, and increased reporting on how much of the “innovation” drug companies claim they need is actually financed with taxpayer subsidies, “no one should be assisting the price gouging that puts patients’ lives at risk,” Ross said.  

Ross cited concerns voiced by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Adam Hirsh who warned last week about the U.S. insistence on TPP language that permits the drug companies to maintain “their monopolies on patented medicines, keep cheaper generics off the market, and block ‘biosimilar’ competitors from introducing new medicines.” 

The nurses “will also protest any agreement that allows any corporation to sue a government for ‘lost’ profits due to laws or regulations that establish public protections,” Ross added. News reports today said that the final TPP agreement had excluded tobacco companies from ISDS, which have committed some of the most notorious abuses under the corporate tribunals. “Why just tobacco when you have had many other corporate giants exploiting the same disgraceful extra-legal proceedings, Ross said. “No corporation should ever have the right to override laws that protect public safety.”