The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and international trade in health services. Impact and regulations

• Author: Driss Bakhouya
• Pages: 54-68

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)

and international trade in health services.

Impact and regulations

PhD. Driss BAKHOUYA1

Abstract

This article is in terested in studying the impact of trade agreements on the quality

of health services, and the statement of the role of the Ministry of Health to protect the

quality of these services. The problems that arise in this study; ho w the a pplication of

GATT on trade in health, and services? This article also includes the impact of

international trade a greements on the issue of attracting foreign in vestments in the field of

health, and to clarify the government's ability to maintain the health and political, and the

capacity of national health products to compete with foreign products. Different research

methods were used in th e study, including: ana lysis, synthesis, deduction, induction.

However, the most used method was comparative considering the specifics of the subject

under studying. The study ends by mentioning that although so far only a few countries

where trade in health servic es has a major role, trading. However, there seems to be

agreement that is wide enough , with respect to health services. Furthermore, Trade

liberalization -or privatization - can may lead to the development of second-degree health

care system.

Keywords: gats agreement; health services; health policy; the TRIPS agreement.

JEL Classification: K13, K32.

1. Introduction

At first, trade negotiations and the opening of the market seen as a problem

that has not been a priority for health policy makers so far, health policy makers are

interested only in the TRIPs Agreement and its implications for public access to the

drug2. On the other hand, trade negotiations' services can have a major impact on

the provision of health services; therefore, the role of the health department to be

important that the health department must try to understand what happened and

take a more proactive role again. Traditionally, provision of services is a non-

economic activity, however, because such a rapid development of technology,

services- including health services began to be traded. Due to increasing their

economic importance, the following basic range of guidelines and rules for

1 Driss Bakhouya, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Adrar, Algeria,

bakhouya1980@yahoo.com .

2 Helmi Khair, Is the right to health undermined by the agree ment of trade-related aspects of

intellectual property rights?: University of negri sembilan 4, Journal of Academia, 2016, 4 (01):

28-33.