Posted on 01/28/2005 8:00:54 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
When Congress passed landmark Medicare reforms last year, critics opposed a provision banning Americans from buying "Canadian" prescription drugs and a study of the safety and cost benefits of cross border purchasing was mandated in the legislation.
For several years, healthcare policy analysts and health safety experts have produced a cacophony of powerful objections to importation based on worries about safety and pricing. Now adding to the din of serious concern comes this study from the Department of Health and Human Services produced by a respected, international expert panel that not only highlights the dangers of importation, but is likely to shift the tide of the debate.
"Safe Importation" is an oxymoron. It is impossible to achieve, and any politician claiming that importation can be safe knowingly speaks an untruth. The HHS report now gives them little room to wiggle and even fewer places to hide.
Released in mid-December, the report provides irrefutable evidence that banning what consumers believe are "Canadian" drugs protects Americans from harm. The report also dispels another vote-garnering argument proffered by pro-importation politicians by casting doubt that Canadian drugs are cheaper.
In analyzing the effects of legalizing importation from non-U.S. sources, a critical finding of the study echoes concerns of importation opponents that drugs purchased from "Canada" are often not, in fact, Canadian.
As many as 70% of Internet websites that have the appearance of being in Canada, aren't. They are not peddling U.S.-made drugs returned from Canada. Their drugs are produced in unsafe, unsanitary facilities in places such as India, the Dominican Republic and Pakistan. They are either minimally effective or outright counterfeits with no active ingredients.
And the American patient ordering from his computer has little chance of detecting that his drugs come from foreign manufacturers or criminal counterfeiters.
Demonstrating its own concerns, Health Canada refuses to vouch for the quality of drugs that flow through Canada to the U.S. Its position is that the country receiving foreign prescription drugs bears responsibility for the quality of those drugs. The Canadian Government echoes the concerns of its Health Department and goes even further, questioning whether or not to continue allowing Canadian pharmacies to export drugs to the U.S. at all.
Canadian officials recognize that the drug supply of some 30 million Canadians cannot possibly fill the needs of nearly 300 million Americans. It recognizes that this supply deficit is a gilded invitation for bad actors to ramp up counterfeit drug importation schemes.
The Canadian Health Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, has repeatedly stated that Canada "cannot be the drugstore of the United States" and threatened to impose new regulations that would essentially bar the sales of actual Internet pharmacies by the end of January.
Legalizing importation would ensure that Americans take drugs from unknown sources for which nobody has taken responsibility. That, says the HHS report, is a prescription for disaster. "Many transactions," the report offers, "are occurring via poorly regulated and occasionally bogus Internet operations that have been documented ... to provide consumers with inferior products."
That prescription drugs from unverifiable sources are dangerous is no surprise. But few anticipated that the report would find that Canadian prescription drugs are not necessarily cheaper than their American counterparts.
"That most imported drugs are less expensive than American drugs is generally not true," the report states. It concluded that generic drugs, most widely used by Americans, are usually less expensive here in the U.S. and that lower prices can be found simply by shopping around or utilizing readily available prescription drug discount cards.
The study's authors contend that the enormous - and impossible - expense of screening imported drugs would more than offset any cost savings. "The public rightly expects that ... imported drugs [would] be safe and effective," they wrote. "Substantial resources would ... be needed to ensure adequate inspection of imported drug products."
The study raises yet another red flag for Americans seeking "Canadian" prescription drugs and confirms that there is no balance between safety and cost, no compromise appropriate. The U.S. has the safest drug supply in the world, and importing danger based on false cost concerns is simply not worth the risk.
HHS demonstrated once and for all that a Canadian drug cure-all is a hazardous myth. With such overwhelming evidence of the dangers inherent in legalizing importation, it is unconscionable that any politician would continue to play Russian roulette with the integrity of our medicine supply.
Bang?
We will just have to wait and see.
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Kerri Houston is Vice President of Policy for Frontiers of Freedom and Executive Director of its Project for the American Healthcare Century.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
Drug safety PING!
Legalize stupidity fer adults...the Drug War is Counter-Productive...MUD
I wish the GOP would go back to being for limited gov't. This is pure pandering to the drug industry.Unfortunately many of the "GOP" are corporate bought lackeys - willing to peddle whatever legislation benefits their benefactors.
LOL The spin continues! Big Drug Company lobbying buying our politicians.
The drugs we order from the CanadianDrugstore.com are made in the USA..same brand, same ingredients, same packaging.
Nice try, spinmeisters, but we know better.
I realize that most politicians are in the back pocket of someone - but do they need to be so damn obvious about it???
Hrmm...maybe it's all the "Canadian" medicine that's made people up here so damn liberal...
That's where "your tax dollars at work" is going to start. It'll be a public hospital and Medicaid that has to take care of that kid after mom and pop are tossed into jail fro trying to kill him.
The GOP is for free trade...expect when it comes to protecting drug companies.
BTW, even if you pulled the federales OUT you'd still have state governments involved, and in different ways.
Yup. We need a 3rd party.
You forgot to apend the "sarcasm" tag. This forces me to believe that you'd accept the word of an internet site over that of your friendly, neighborhood pharmacist.
Who is it that's gonna give drugs to kids?! I'm all fer increased use of voluntary drug testing fer Young'uns and adults who have jobs where that can't afford to be stoned...but all these nightmare scenarios yer envisoning when/if pot is legalized would already be happening considering the easy availability of the loco weed.
FReegards...MUD
What about banning imported vegetables?
This is the "Canada is the place to get pharmaceuticals", not the "Free Dope" thread!
Keep the FDA out of this. It is called the free market. Freepers love it everywhere but here for some odd reason.
Raise the price.
Is that a bad thing?
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