World Health Organization1 Summary

This note provides background on the treatment of health insurance services by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization, and explains the relevance of current GATS negotiations for health insurance trade. It begins with a general description of GATS, indicates how health insurance is classified in GATS-defined service sectors, and outlines options countries have when making insurance-related market access commitments. It then explains why GATS commitments made to date have not yet had any measurable effect on changes in insurance markets. It reviews some of the issues addressed in current GATS negotiations and their potential implications for market access commitments covering health insurance. It concludes by reviewing the opportunities, risks and challenges presented by GATS for national policies and regulations affecting health insurance. A Brief Overview of GATS The General Agreement on Trade in Services of the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into effect in 1995, as a result of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. GATS establishes a framework of progressive liberalization in services trade, which allows countries substantial flexibility to determine: 1) which sectors of the service economy they wis