Winston Peters: Social cost of economic nirvana

An issue has been simmering in the background of New Zealand trade for a number of years.
And like all issues to do with globalisation and free trade, battalions are lining up in support or opposition.
The debate is a vexed one and not nearly as new or recent as many would have it.
The zenith of the free trade movement was at the end of the 19th century when all manner of goods were traded between nations with barely a regulation, import restriction or limitation standing in the way.
And for those countries labouring under the belief that this was a sovereign issue for their governments to decide, there were gunboats ready to stand off any unwelcoming harbour under instructions to fire salvoes of warning which usually had the desired effect.
This is how many coastal Chinese learned of the import/export industry and they've never forgotten it.
They were the days of imperialism accompanied by the belief that might was right and that the trader was doing the natives a favour.
Then followed the decades of protectionism that eventually evolved into geographic trading blocks, the European Union being a prime example.
It was still protectionist but within much wider geographic or imperial boundaries. And now we have the World Trade Organisation and all manner of inter-country arrangements subsumed under the "free trade" banner.
The ideology behind this movement argues that the free movement of free goods and services worldwide portends an uplifting of hundreds of millions, nay billions, out of poverty to a better future.
Across the political divide are those who argue bluntly that free trade is shorthand for exploitation of people and resources where the rich get richer and that even though the poor become less so the gap between the two seems to be ever growing larger.
And of late, this group has taken to pointing out that as the gap between the rich and poor in wealthy countries has got greater, so too will this phenomenon repeat itself between nations.
Any comparison between the wealth now in the hands of even fewer rich in the United States compared with the remainder of the population in just the last decade alone compels one to the conclusion that they've got a serious point here.
It's against this background that an aspect of the Trans Pacific Partnership, involving eight nations, including New Zealand and the United States, is causing alarm to many New Zealanders.
Assuming political significance is the future position of New Zealand's Pharmac, a government body set up in June 1993.
It has control of access to drugs, as a buying monopoly. That is, Pharmac is a government-backed purchasing agency that determines which drugs will be subsidised and those that will not. This means we have a two-tier health system in New Zealand. One is for those who can afford the newer innovative drugs and the other for those who cannot and, therefore, become reliant upon old therapies that are often less effective. This was always inevitable when Pharmac expenditure was capped, regardless of new discoveries.
There are numerous examples of New Zealanders suffering painful, malignant deaths in an euthanasia illegal country when the better-off have been able to afford a better quality of care in their final months.
The serious problem with the debate so far is that neither side is prepared to admit any merit in their opponents' arguments. There is no doubt that Pharmac is seriously underfunded. Any comparison with all but two of the OECD countries puts New Zealand in a rather dismal light. Per capita we are spending way less than other first world countries on our people's health. It results in a number of anomalies, including the embarrassment of New Zealanders having to travel to Australia and other countries for superior treatment.
And to be fair, the pharmaceutical companies, behind this free-trade debate, domiciled in the United States, and wanting an end to Pharmac's monopoly, have left themselves on too many occasions and with too many products, open to allegations of exploitation.
As so often happens the actual profits from new medicines far outweigh the cost of research and any government has a duty to do the best they possibly can by their citizens.
Just this week, a number of these companies announced a 60 per cent reduction in their pharmaceutical prices to some Third World countries.
Long gone are the days of Alexander Fleming and his life-saving drug, penicillin. From his invention, others made a fortune but we rightly remember him and his service to humanity.
Who knows which way this debate will go? But a lot is at stake here and, sooner or later, someone near you, if not you, is going to be seriously affected by the outcome for better or for worse.
In the spaghetti bowl of free-trade agreements that we have headlong rushed into in search of some economic nirvana, this one could come home to bite a lot of us. Which leads to an uneasy thought: why haven't Norway, Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Singapore, joined the stampede?
These are, after all, leading first world countries, a position that we surely hope to be again one day.