Posted on 07/29/2019 6:56:40 AM PDT by rickmichaels
U.S. presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said it’s an “embarrassment” that Americans have to travel to Canada to buy cheaper medicine, pointing once again to Canada’s health-care system as a model for his country to emulate as he joined a group of diabetics on a trip to Ontario on Sunday.
The Vermont senator, who is among the nearly two-dozen contendors vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, was in Windsor, Ont., with a group of American diabetics looking to buy insulin at a lower cost.
“It is an embarrassment for those of us who are Americans,” Sanders told reporters outside a pharmacy. “We love our Canadian neighbours and we thank them so much, but we shouldn’t have to come to Canada.”
Typically, a vial of the insulin Type 1 diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar costs about $340 in the United States — roughly 10 times the price in Canada.
Sanders pointed the finger at major pharmaceutical companies and a lack of government oversight on drug pricing.
“We will do also what the Canadians do — they look around the world and they see what other countries are paying for various types of prescription drugs, and that is what they charge here in Canada,” he said, noting that Americans must also emulate Canadians by regulating prescription drug prices.
Sanders posted on Twitter over the weekend that the high cost for insulin has put the lives of American diabetics at risk.
He has long been an advocate for more affordable medicine, having made a similar trip to Canada to purchase pharmaceuticals in 1999.
“As Americans, what we have got to ask ourselves is how come the same exact medicine — in this case insulin — is sold here in Canada for one tenth of the price that it is sold in the United States?” Sanders said in Windsor.
The socialist senator also has a history of talking up Canada’s universal health care, telling an audience at the University of Toronto that this country sets a “strong example” for Americans during a 2017 visit.
That year, he introduced a failing bill in Congress to bring universal health care to the U.S., and he’s made the topic a cornerstone of his second presidential bid.
On Friday, 15 groups representing patients, health professionals, hospitals, and pharmacists sounded the alarm about so-called pharmaceutical tourists in a letter to Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, saying a growth in the trend could spell trouble.
“The Canadian medicine supply is not sufficient to support both Canadian and U.S. consumers,” the letter states. “The supply simply does not, and will not, exist within Canada to meet such demands.”
A spokesman for Petitpas Taylor said in an email Friday the government opposes any initiatives that could adversely affect the supply or cost of prescription drugs.
“We continue our work to lower drug prices for Canadians and ensure they have uninterrupted access to the prescription drugs they need,” Thierry Belair said.
Current rules allow Americans to take home a maximum three-month personal supply of medicines bought in Canada, and four states have passed legislation allowing for wholesale or individual imports of medications.
Because insulin is non-prescription in Canada, there is no way to track how much of the drug might be heading south.
You know, if it wasn’t such a heavily regulated industry, it’d be relatively easy to start a drug company, sell something like insulin at a reasonable price, and thereby corner the market.
Just sayin....
Democrats are pros at bitching whining and moaning about things but they never fix anything.
However they sure make a lot of money doing so.
Leftists are short on their understanding of cause and effect.
Drugs in the US cost so much because of regulation (some of which is good). It takes close to a billion dollars to get a big time successful drug through the FDA, and that money has to be recouped by the company somehow. Yet, the actual production cost of the drug might be very low. So, the company prices the drug in the USA to recover costs, and any sales abroad are done at marginal cost plus, which is much lower.
So, we have a situation where:
- Excessive regulation in the interest of safety and liability avoidance make the hurdle to drug introduction high
- Marginal costs of production are low
- and bleeding heart sentiment says US companies shouldn’t price their drugs out of availability for poor foreign markets because they still make a profit on marginal production.
Now, Bernie (and many others) want to treat the problem of high prices here by going outside to purchase at the low-price country cost.
That’s messed up. A more rational solution would be for drugs to cost less here because of an expedited FDA process, some tolerance of mistakes, and some leashing of the plaintiff bar.
It all comes down to what protection you’re offering patent holders. Canada won’t let them charge whatever they want. We will. Personally I have had a change of heart about pharmaceutical patents. I would reduce the time of exclusivity and fix it so it can’t be extended. Make the pharmacy companies compete.
The insulin they sold in the twenties is completely different from the insulin sold today. Today’s insulin is designer insulin.
Re “heavily regulated”: I agree.
It seems to me that once a pharm. company jumps through all of the hoops and their product is approved for sale by the masterminds at the FDA that the company should not be held responsible if something goes wrong, unless, UNLESS they withheld data or falsified data. I believe that would bring down the costs significantly.
Not to mention that sometimes it’s only one person who had a problem and 10,000,000 who benefit from the drug but the manufacturer is forced to remove the product (and lose its revenue) because of the liability.
“It takes close to a billion dollars to get a big time successful drug through the FDA”
A Polish insulin was developed for about $40 million about 15 years back.
A simple and easy fix is to pass a federal law stating:
Medicines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) at least six months in the past and are currently in good standing with the EMA shall treated by domestic law as if they have been FDA approved. Such medicines, if marketable in the European Union, shall be importable into and marketable in the United States under the conditions specifically imposed by the European Union.
“patent holders”
Recombinant insulin dates back to the 1980’s.
Some newer varieties may have some patent protections.
Where would you get "something like insulin," in order to sell it at a reasonable price? What's reasonable?
That would certainly stir the domestic research/legal establishment. Every manufacturer would develop their new medicines in the EU.
Not that the above projection is all bad. There would be thrashing, but eventually laws on medical development would get more or less harmonized.
“some leashing of the plaintiff bar”
Here’s your prescription today. Would you like to have tort coverage for it?
Will someoneelse be paying for that tort coverage?
No, it’s patient pay.
No, thanks!
I hear what you're saying...the industry is heavily regulated, but the FDA isn't holding up reviews excessively, in my opinion. The bottom line is that it takes time to research (and money) and develop medicines.
The phased approach to clinical development isn't because regulators want it--it makes sound clinical and ethical sense. We must first test for safety, then efficacy, and then to compare the drug for health outcomes. The industry doesn't want trials expedited at the expense of dead bodies.
Personally, I would love to see other countries shoulder more of the expense. Just as they rely on our Department of Defense for military actions, they seem to assume that we have an endless stream of innovative, efficacious and safe medicines that we can dispense like Pez.
I agree that the three step rationale in FDA approval makes sense, but is costly. But, there was mention of a Polish drug being developed in a short period for $40 or $50 million. Did they skip steps? Or was the drug so close to another existing one that it was easily approved, so the contrast is not as great as it would seem?
https://www.medindia.net/drug-price/insulin.htm
https://www.medindia.net/drug-price/insulin/lantus.htm
I think that translates to about $38 for a 10ml vial.
“Every manufacturer would develop their new medicines in the EU.”
US drug designers aren’t going to move readily. Learning French or German isn’t easy and it would interfere with drug design work. Housing in England is generally terribly expensive. Scotland gets real cold.
Drug approval testing is often multi-national.
I believe it was molecularly identical.
Patents must describe how the protected article is made in sufficient detail for one skilled in the art to make the patented item.
If a product came out in 1981, the patents would have expired around 2001, or before.
The structure of insulin was given in my organic chemistry book I bought in the mid-1960’s.
As a drug company you would manufacture it. Charge less for it than what others are charging.
If the price of insulin is as outrageous as the article claims, that’d be easy to do.
If not, then it is priced correctly.
“I have a condition which requires drugs and I pay to fill the prescriptions a lot. I also frequently travel to EU. Prescriptions drug prices (for the same drugs I take in Canada) in Germany for example, are much lower and often 1/4 of that what I have to pay in Canada. Same in Australia and NZ.”
Canadian reader comment from:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/drug-prices-1.5007636
Canada doesn’t have the lowest drugs prices of a Westernized country.
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