Recommendations

WTO GATS' ARTICLE XXI PROCEDURE
Necessary procedure for safely leaving GATS or modifying GATS commitments.

Politicians who don't leave GATS first, who try to expand healthcare to all states to lower standards in order to bring in foreign insurers - will trap the entire nation.

One popular idea thats been in circulation for quite some time, involves large scale international trade in healthcare services, managed like an auction site with patients health information driving bids for care and hospital beds. Like bidding on airline flights or hotel rooms, or subprime mortgages, however, it has major pitfalls. See "The Scope of GATS and of its Obligations" section on medical tourism.

Harmonization - to allow one policy to be sold in all states has been the major demand by foreign insurers to enter the US market, a change that will forever shut the door to Article XXI buying our freedom if we should ever be able to, because the cost would increase exponentially. So selling on epolicy "across state lines" will not only reduce medicolegal standards of care to the lowest common denominator everywhere, it could also end up leading to subsidized care only being offered overseas for poorer patients.It should be noted that the WTO is just one of many FTAS, some like the TISA is pushed by the US and seems to have a major healthcare globalization compnent.

Globalization is framed by the US and European countries to the developing countries as offering them access to resources and a means of funding their beleaguered healthcare systems with foreign patients but the reality of poor Americans overseas as their lives at home fall apart (and Single Payer is blocked forever) seems very very unlikely to be the panacea that the poor countries are hoping for in a world where inequality between rich and poor is rising rapidly.

Note also that the GATS must be left to preserve Social Security and Medicare

Expanding Medicare to more people, without leaving GATS first, could 'accidentally' destroy Medicare and Social Security (Because of the Annex on Financial Services provisions)

We must leave GATS first and then we can only have a totally noncommercial scheme that has no competition, so that means no health insurance can be sold. We don't want to end up in the horrible condition the NHS is in the UK, that will happen if we allow insurance to be sold like they have. See Page 11 here.

NOTE: There is another page, an article in the News section on the Article XXI procedure too, that you should also read-

Also read its related links. Also read the "carve-outs" keyword links (may need to scroll up)  and read the Recommendations..

Additional resources

As appropriate for a paper by a brilliant JD student, the late Nick Skala's 2009 paper has extensive  legal references.Skala also included a carve out at its end which seems like a good idea because it announces our intent unambiguously to the world is to leave these agreements.

Without that, given the intentional ambiguity situation, (or "creative ambiguity") nothing else would work.

Remember the intent of these 'agreements' nobody in their right mind would agree with, is to capture regulation and end democracy in specific economic domains (service sectors that involve money) irreversibly, so we wont get a second chance, after all, corporations need CERTAINTY and protection from fickle voters. If they just let us vote for things, we would likely tax them and where would they be then? "Majoritarianism" (<<note: This is satire!)

They rigged the system with GATS a long time ago. They are NOT going to let anything change that, not in a million years. The only way out is to expose their little scam so they have to pay a high price for their dishonesty in trust. NOW.

Recently, this paper on JSTOR has collected some of the other relevant links together and formatted them conveniently for use in legal citation.

Because of GATS rules requiring one way motion only (GATS only allows deregulation, not re-regulation) it, must be done NOW or our country's policy space remains imprisoned, our citizens effectively held hostage.

Candidates who claim things they cannot deliver, like "expanding the ACA" in violation of the standstill and rollback  and the progressive liberalization rules, without getting out of the GATS first are allowing a massive job outsourcing (GATS's default, and already planned) in those sectors and at best misrepresenting the GATS situation, and it's quite likely for that reason, they don't intend to win.

The entire US political situation is an elaborate theatrical performance that its just unbelievable people don't see through. Getting out of the GATS may be difficult because other countries claim we promised them the jobs now,( not only after the "single undertaking" as we claim)

As soon as we express our intend to leave, foreign countries may- likely will demand compensation, embarrassing both parties that they would in effect sell their entire constituency out - trading away their jobs by the millions to the lowest bidders. After all, this is America, the country where almost every film has a happy ending.US politics now is made for TV, its not based on facts. Also, its script writers are on strike.

(Unfortunately, in the real world, often the rich and powerful crush the weak.)

Read the rules, the rules that all WTO members who have made commitments in the relevant sectors, like we have, must follow.

Progressive Liberalization is an aspect of GATS' extreme ideology.

Barring the correct exit procedure, we will be unable to do anything except make things worse and worse.

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FINDING THE US's GATS SPECIFIC COMMITMENTS:

How to find WHAT service sectors we have committed:

sectionsection

Note to MEDIA, this constitutes official proof of the situation described on this site.

You owe the country a very large apology for carrying the disinformation being disseminated by the mainstream media and failing to carry these facts, inconvenient as they may be.

Public Citizen made a combined PDF some time ago that contained all of the SCs, at that time, but to get the official current version you should compare both that and the documents on the WTO site (I use both whichever is handy and I have never seen any discrepancies, however, new SCs could have been released and you would never know it if you did not check the WTO site)

Because only they are official.

GUIDE TO READING GATS SCHEDULES

Note that these are only for GATS and there are a great many OTHER US FTAs plus several new ones - like TISA  in the pipeline.

By The Way:
It's very important to NOT have a government that is working to undermine your future behind your back!

It is starting to get hard to remember such times.

Both parties rigged the system to suit corporations, and are cooperating in a huge deception, while telling people what they want to hear.

Media, its your responsibility to call them out on this. You are ignoring the underlying truth! The nation wont forgive you for this, and it will figure it out.

SHAME ON ALL OF YOU MEDIA FOR PRETENDING ALL IS NORMAL, ITS NOT!

for example, you can see proof there on the WTO site how the US Clinton Administration committed multiple service sectors including health insurance to be bound by the GATS agreement decades ago.

(You can also see there how the Clinton Administration promised in 1998 - on the very last page of the very last supplement (Supplement 3) to the Specific Commitments - to 'reform' the Glass-Steagall Act.

Indeed they did the very next year, by reforming it out of existence.

That totally contradicts the official story.

The WTO also was given an opportunity to come clean, but they blew it.

PLEASE SEE THESE RELATED LINKS:

For example, this applies - and may even be used by the WTO to remove Medicare and Social Security from their protection from the GATS in the US, (which would immediately require its conversion to just another commercial investment, with low yields, a bonanza for Wall Street but a disaster for the people of the US, especially those millions of us who have no other retirement savings )

India's government in trade negotiations to offshore millions of US jobs, represent SS as standing in the way of that long planned "services liberalization" the jobs portion of the GATS, and other FTAS etc (See "GATS Mode 4") India also claims, (and no doubt Wall Street is overjoyed by this)  that it is unfair for their now millions of "temporary" guest workers to work here for, in many cases decades, contributing into our Social Security, and not be able to "take their money out of the system".
So the long term trend, because of GATS is likely the privatization of these benefits, they will likely be turned into 401ks. Thanks to GATS. Similarly, public healthcare benefits will likely be turned into vouchers applyable towards the payment of commercial health insurance around the world.

(Developing countries provide their skilled laborers, such as computer programmers, engineers, nurses, teachers, etc. at competitive rates, even insisting that we not be required to pay them our minimum wages. (this is disputed) They also promote their health care systems as cost effective alternatives to your local hospitals and doctors.

Here is a position paper which gives India's feelings about Mode Four as its called generally.)

Its true, it is unfair to make US workers train their replacements, pay them less than what they are worth, in some cases a lot less, and then not give them a path to citizenship or the money they paid in to benefits back.

But thats what India wants, more than the totalization agreement (which they would need a real Social Security and national healthcare plan to deserve, as I understand it, not fake ones set up for this reason entirely)

It seems that Social Security was intended to protect domestic laborers in an era where most people worked, and those people were nationals of the country where they were working.

The winners of many contracts: new services subcontractors - foreign subcontracting firms often don't want to "hire locals".

Why would they when their own country is having riots over the lack of jobs?

The facts are, Social Security was a promise made to the people of America in order to create a social contract. One which has vanished in all but name only but politicians are pretending it still exists much more than in reality it still does, and hiding this covert scheme to dismantle the little of it that is left under a confusing "bocage" of good cop bad cop shenanigans-in order to deceive the public.

Legislators protected Scocial Security and Medicare- and the NHS in the UK, from privatization up until GATS. And it seems, many of them still don't know that GATS endangers them.

Now many people are retiring early involuntarily.

Does Capitalism really want out of its responsibilities to society. Or was GATS a trick?

(Not just in the US, also in other entities such as the EU that also are bound by it.)

Most people don't seem to know about it or that it applies to so many things.

The WTO Annex on Financial Services presents such substantial dangers to existing public services such as Medicare and Social Security it deserves its own treatment.

Such a treatment is waiting for me to be able to learn more about it.

Other web pages that discuss this issue:

GATS and Financial Services Regulation

Publications by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (PCGTW) and Canada's Policy Alternatives' Trade and Investment Research Project (of the Council of Canadians NGO).

And several others.

See especially our Keyword (on the left, scroll down)  on the governmental authority exclusion, (i.e. GATS Article I:3 b+c and this Annex) but also many other pages, including those on necessity, proportionality, trade restrictiveness,  necessity testing, etc. Links are below, in the tags area.

Public Citizen Backgrounder on GATS

ALSO, see governmental authority exclusion 

^^^^^Important^^^^^^

And this page on how we must get out of GATS.

It will cost us because we'll have to compensate the countries that our friends in previous Administrations promised the jobs to.

That applies to both the US and UK!

So, we won't have jobs and also all subsidized public services aren't going to be any more?

Well, the GATS and other FTAS  often don't apply if they are 100% privately funded. Also if a country is a least developed country, on the official list, sometimes they can bend the rules. 

We're not poor enough to bend the WTO rules, yet!

Keyword on subsidies.

Subsidies for too long are a violation of WTO rules.

Also, jobs are in the process of being outsourced, almost all the decent jobs. How will they do it?

Outsourcing. And LOTS of OFFSHORING. the jobs will go to propping poor countries rich people up.

Really, thats their plan.

Whomever bids lowest gets it.

How about you, is your job secure?

Oh, I'm not worried, (my candidate) has got my back!

 Uhhhhh...

Actually, the 'leaderships' if you can call it that, of both US corporate parties are quite likely both colluding with one another, and have been for a very very long time, to deceive the country, manipulating even House members and god knows how many of them don't know. (A lot)

And we're being incredibly stupid to fall for it. But the stakes are pretty high, as they are taking over the entire world and its future (really!)

And they are determined to win it without firing a a shot, by trickery.

Fascism is a cult, and it has no love of democracy.

We have to deal with that, NOW, I'm sorry to break it to you. Our country's future has been STOLEN by a trade agreement 25 yrs ago. We just never got the memo.

See the Skala paper which explains the standstill in the way of health insurance reform and single payer.

This chart of GATS rules that tear services apart if they dont qualify for the ultra narrow governmental authority exclusion is from the late Nick Skala's paper.

More soon, this is a placeholder.