Access to (almost) all areas: the implications of greater trade cooperation between the US and the EU for health care services in the Union Member States—the case of the NHS in England and Wales and Scotland

Andreangeli, Arianna (2015) Access to (almost) all areas: the implications of greater trade cooperation between the US and the EU for health care services in the Union Member States—the case of the NHS in England and Wales and Scotland. [Conference Proceedings] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Introduction. The current negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement have been welcome by many as another opportunity to boost economic growth on both sides of the Atlantic, by abolishing barriers to trade, enhancing regulatory convergence and fostering mutual trade flows. Others however have been far more sceptical: in the United Kingdom the debate has been particularly fierce and polarised, as the TTIP has increasingly been regarded as a factor potentially accelerating the process of ‘privatisation by stealth’ of the systems for the provision of state funded health care in the Member States. In the United Kingdom, the English NHS has already been opened up to significant private enterprise input with the 2012 Health and Social Care Act which has meant, among other outcomes, the applicability of competition principles to service provision and has conferred to Monitor, as sector regulator, competition enforcement powers. In Scotland, by contrast, the direction of travel has been substantially different, with the Parliament in Edinburgh being strongly committed to keeping health care provision ‘free at the point of need’ in the hands of the state.

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