We could say this is a quid pro quo for America’s sake, if these are US based pharma companies. For them to get richer from foreign business isn’t an utter downer for the rest of the USA. Rich entities spend. If I were in business but struggling, I’d prefer richer customers to poorer ones, all else equal.
I think both major parties realize now that if they realistically want more taxes they are going to have to get more spending.
The impression I get is that the American market is what makes all of this a going concern, and that lax intellectual property laws in the rest of the world have set up the situation that we are subsidizing the rest of the world’s healthcare and driving its innovations.
If they do not go beyond American law in the protection of intellectual property I have no problem with this. Quite frankly I think we could stand for a loosening of restrictions here, which would still result in greater restrictions elsewhere. The problem is though, that I have zero faith in Big Pharma to take such a windfall in good grace. I would love to see a situation where they are actually paid in other countries for services rendered, not a situation where they extort anything they can get from humanity while hiding behind lobbyists and loopholes.
Thing is though that we have no way of knowing, because this is all being hammered out in secret, and though we are expected to pay for it, and though our governmental institutions, officials, and legal authority are being subverted in the service of this, we have no say or even so much as a peek.