Trade in Health Products: Reducing Trade Barriers for Better Health
Helble, Matthias; Shepherd, Benjamin | January 2017
Abstract
Trade in health products has been flourishing in recent years as the demand for better health has been growing throughout the world. At the same time, trade in health products is hampered by substantive trade barriers. In this paper, we present evidence that countries around the world still apply tariffs and nontariff measures that increase prices and limit the availability of health-related products such as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical equipment. The case for liberalizing trade in these products is therefore strong. In addition, we show that improving trade facilitation performance, using the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement as a starting point, can be linked to improved handling of health-related products such as vaccines which, in turn, would boost usage. In the last part of the paper, we study the price differences for insulin across countries. We observe that the price of insulin has various determinants, one of them being open trade: the higher the level of competition between manufacturers, the lower the price of insulin. In summary, lowering trade barriers on health products can make a substantive contribution to building up health systems and lowering out-of-pocket payments of patients.
Citation
Helble, Matthias; Shepherd, Benjamin. 2017. Trade in Health Products: Reducing Trade Barriers for Better Health. © Asian Development Bank Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/11540/6780.Keywords
Urban Population
Traditional Medicine
Medical Statistics
Drug Policy
Preventive Medicine
Medical Economics
Preferential tariffs
Tariff negotiations
Protectionist measures
Tariff agreements
World Health Organization
Quality of Health Care
Partnerships in Health Reform
Health
Intraregional Trade
Regional Trade
Trade
Health Standards
Health Care Cost Control
Health Care Access
World Trade Organization
Trade Restrictions
Trade Negotiations
Trade Liberalization
Trade Barriers
Health status indicators
Medical and health care industry
Vaccination
Delivery of medical care
Foreign trade regulation
Health products
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