[Ip-health] U.N.'s World Health Organization Eyeing Global Tax on Banking, Internet Activity

[Malini Aisola]

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,583127,00.html

U.N.'s World Health Organization Eyeing Global Tax on Banking, Internet
Activity

Friday , January 15, 2010

By George Russell

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask
governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet
activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Such a scheme could raise "tens of billions of dollars" on behalf of the
United Nations' public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which
would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and
manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

The multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" is only one of a "suite
of proposals" for financing the rapid transformation of the global
medical industry that will go before WHO's 34-member supervisory
Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

The idea is the most lucrative =E2=80=94 and probably the most controversia=
l =E2=80=94
of a number of schemes proposed by a 25-member panel of medical experts,
academics and health care bureaucrats who have been working for the past
14 months at WHO's behest on "new and innovative sources of funding" to
accomplish major shifts in the production of medical R&D.

WHO's so-called Expert Working Group has also suggested asking rich
countries to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to
finance the shift in worldwide research and development, as well as
asking cash-rich developing nations like China, India or Venezuela to
pony up more of the money.

These would also add billions in additional funds to international
health care for the future =E2=80=94 as much as $7.4 billion yearly from ri=
ch
countries, and as much as $12.1 billion from low- and middle-income
nations.

But the taxation ideas draw the most interest. The expert panel cites a
number of possible examples. Among them:

=E2=80=94a 10 per cent tax on the international arms trade, "which might ne=
t
about $5 billion per annum";

=E2=80=94a "digital tax or 'hit' tax." The report says the levy "could yiel=
d
tens of billions of U.S. dollars from a broad base of users";

=E2=80=94a financial transaction tax. The report approvingly cites a levy i=
n
Brazil that charged 0.38 percent on bills paid online and on unspecified
"major withdrawals." The report says the Brazilian tax was raising an
estimated $20 billion per year until it was cancelled for unspecified
reasons.

The panel concludes that "taxes would provide greater certainty once in
place than voluntary contributions," even as the report urges WHO's
executive board to promote all of the alternatives, and more, to support
creation of a "global health research and innovation coordination and
funding mechanism" for the planned revolution in medical research,
development and distribution.

Click here to read the executive summary of the report.

The WHO scheme to transfer impressive amounts of money, technology,
patents and manufacturing ability to the developing world in a global
battle to conquer disease looks similar in many respects to the calls
for huge transfers of wealth and technology that were at the heart of
the just-failed U.N.-sponsored conference on lowering greenhouse gas
emissions at Copenhagen.

Indeed, the volume of revenues that the experts foresee from their
global indirect tax =E2=80=94 if it should ever be approved by enough natio=
nal
governments =E2=80=94 might well come close to the $30 billion annual wealt=
h
transfer that rich nations approved at Copenhagen to hand over to poor
countries until 2012.

But a global health tax would go one big step further. And, as the
experts point out, one trail-blazing version of their global consumer
tax for medical research already exists: a germinating program known as
UNITAID, which aims to battle against HIV/AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis.

UNITAID, which began in 2006 and is also hosted by WHO, is financed in
part by a "solidarity contribution" levy of anywhere from $1.20 to $58
on airline tickets among a group of nations led by France, Brazil,
Chile, Norway and Britain. According to the WHO experts report, it has
raised around $1 billion since its inception, with 13 countries having
already passed the airline tax legislation and "several" others in the
process of doing so.

The idea, as with the "indirect" taxes that WHO is about to consider, is
that a relatively small consumer levy, once implemented, is a
low-profile and relatively painless way to create a global health-care
tax system.

UNITAID's board chairman, Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French Cabinet
Minister and currently special advisor to U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon on "innovative financing for development," is also a member of
the WHO expert working group.

The global financial mechanism that the experts have been exploring is
the keystone to WHO's entire program for the transformation of the
world's health industry, which was endorsed as a "global strategy and
plan of action" by the health organization's World Assembly in May 2008.

The plan includes more than 100 specific actions across the areas of
research and development, technology transfer and intellectual property
rights, among others, according to an update that will also be presented
to the executive board next week.

Click here for the update.

New regional and national networks for medical innovation and
development are being planned in Asia, Latin America and Africa =E2=80=94 w=
here,
for example, there will be "African-led product research and development
innovation," including delivery of drugs based on traditional medicines.

Another major effort is the transfer of technology to poorer countries
to produce vaccines. One example: H1N1 flu vaccine, which is being
manufactured in China, India and Thailand under licensing arrangements
created under WHO auspices.

After WHO issued repeated warnings of a serious H1N1 influenza pandemic
over the past two years, countries such as Britain and France ordered
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of vaccine, only to decide that
they were unnecessary, leading to mass cancellations of orders. WHO is
reviewing how it handled the crisis.

According to the WHO update, the U.N. organization is already promoting
transfers of new medical products for vaccines against rabies, even
though that disease is now something of a rarity in the West.

A significant aim of the WHO effort is expanding production and
distribution of remedies for what it calls "neglected diseases," mainly
meaning those that are more common in poor, underdeveloped countries
than in richer ones. These include a variety of parasitic ailments,
including trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness.

Behind all of the effort is the "persistent and growing concern," as the
expert's paper puts it, that "the benefits of the advances in health
technology are not reaching the poor," which the paper calls "one of the
more egregious manifestations of inequity."

As with "climate change" at Copenhagen, the WHO's experts see that
health inequity as a malady that innovative and permanent forms of
global taxation are just the right thing to help cure.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.


--
Malini Aisola
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20009
malini.aisola@keionline.org|Tel: +1.202.332.2670|Fax: +1.202.332.2673