Posted on 10/11/2004 10:45:04 AM PDT by Veritas et equitas ad Votum
CONCLUSION
On the basis of its evaluation of proposals to date, CBO has concluded that permitting the importation of foreign-distributed prescription drugs would produce at most a modest reduction in prescription drug spending in the United States. H.R. 2427, for example, which would have permitted importation from a broad set of industrialized countries, was estimated to reduce total drug spending by $40 billion over 10 years, or by about 1 percent.(14) Permitting importation only from Canada would produce a negligible reduction in drug spending.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbo.gov ...
HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?
BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you...
KERRY: The president blocked it. The president also took Medicare, which belongs to you. And he could have lowered the cost of Medicare and lowered your taxes and lowered the costs to seniors.
Here is the White House release on the Medicare presccription cards.
White House statement on health savings accounts
White House Fact Sheet: Supporting America's Small Businesses-discusses Association Health Plans
White House Fact Sheet:Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003
CBO's future budget projections, where you can see that Medicare spending is projected to rise a whopping 1.2% of GDP over the next 10 years.
Is John Kerry just playing the old Democrat scare tactic of scaring old voters? Is he just telling the elderly that Bush will take away their health care and drug benefits? Is John Kerry trying to tell small businesses that they would be better off paying higher taxes in exchange for drug imports that are hardly more affordable? Is Kerry telling us that drug companies making a profit is a BAD thing? You decide...
You can be the "elitist media" will HIDE this information. If you EVER hear it, it will be AFTER the election and PRESENTED as if the information had JUST BEEN RELEASED.
The difficulty as I understand it is that Canada is a very small market compared to the USA, and our government has negotiated the low drug prices contingent upon this market being the one they apply to. If the Americans come up here and buy up all our drugs at the low price negotiated for us, we will have no drugs for Canada -- and the drug companies which are AMERICAN companies, by the way, not Canadian companies, will end the agreement. Thus the low price will last for Americans only til the supply runs out, then nobody will get the low price including us.
True, this will give Canadians one more reason to hate Americans, and up here that is a good thing, but in the meanwhile our teetering socialist medical system will take one more lurch toward catastrophe.
The unsafe drugs the President referred to are being sold over the internet as allegedly coming from Canada, but there is no way of knowing where they actually originate. A doctor in Toronto was busted this past week for writing prescriptions for an internet site without any contact with the "patients" and he said it was not his job to verify any information, only to sign the paperwork. Makes you feel real secure, don't it?
The MAJOR reason the drug companies sell the drugs CHEAPER to canada and many other countries boils down to THEFT. IF these companies REFUSE to sell the drugs at a hefty discount, then the goverments of those countries will simply STEAL the patents and allow drug companies to make the drugs and sell them to their country. The US drug companies thus get NOTHING.
MOST of the world looks to the US to SUPPORT their subsidized drug purchases.
MANY people in the US fall for this garbage that flows over the internet. yet, the people who should REALLY be warning them to AVOID such scams, IGNORE them, the "elitist media". They want everyone to believe that the US companies are just out to RIP them off.
Working for a pharma company, I wish the President would've better defended pharmaceuticals by not only addressing the "safety issue," but also the financial aspects to re-importation.
For every $100 spent on healthcare, only $10 are spent on drugs. That's miniscule to what's being spent on insurance, lawsuits, hospitalization, etc.
Bottom line: allowing reimportation in the short run will provide some political benefits, but in the long run, there will be little cost savings because the "system" will still be broken.
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