Posted on 09/06/2019 8:05:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In partnership with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently proposed that certain pharmaceuticals should be cleared for import from Canada. Although the proposal seeks to lower prices for consumers, it poses critical unintended risks to both American businesses and patients.
The logic behind the proposal is simple. If ‘big pharma’ companies charge American patients high costs while offering their products for lower prices abroad, why not break down trade barriers and increase price competition? While the goal is admirable, the policy would unleash a slew of dangerous side effects.
In Canada, the price of prescription drugs without generic alternatives is regulated by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. For an administration seeking to put‘America First’, importing drugs from Canada would empower bureaucrats in Ottawa to set prices in America.
In addition to abdicating control of our pharmaceutical industry, price controls would hinder the innovation that gives American consumers exclusive access to the latest and most advanced drugs. Allowing drug imports from Canada would also be a tacit endorsement of the heavy-handed and coercive tactics that foreign governments use to obtain discounted drugs at the expense of American companies and pharmaceutical research and development.
However, it’s not just the companies that will feel the pain if the policy goes ahead. With a population smaller than that of California, Canada is simply too small to provide enough drugs for both domestic and American consumption. An overwhelming majority of pharmacists surveyed by the Canadian Pharmacists Association say that drug shortages have already increased over the past three to five years.
After running Canadian shelves dry, where are all of these drugs going to come from? Canada already struggles to limit the spread of counterfeit drugs, which either lack the necessary active ingredient or are laced with toxic additives. In 2017, four former commissioners of the FDA penned an open letter to Congress in opposition to importing drugs from Canada due the risk that these counterfeits pose to American patients.
Opening the northern border to greater drug imports would create a massive loophole for foreign counterfeiters to access the American healthcare market. Even if the FDA were able to verify the origin of each and every shipment—a massive exercise that would be taxpayer funded—there remains the risk that drugs could be switched, tampered or not be stored at proper temperatures en route to Canada.
Rather than pursuing policies that would harm American patients, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers, the federal government should focus on innovation brought by public-private partnerships, which have the potential to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Louisiana’s recent experiment with a subscription model for Hepatitis C treatment illustrates that innovation in government powered by the private sector can be the key to increasing access to safe drugs, without burdening taxpayers or businesses.
Lowering the price of prescription drugs should be a bipartisan priority in Washington. Opening the American healthcare market to potentially deadly counterfeits, while abdicating control of the market to foreign bureaucrats, is simply not a solution.
This message brought to you by your good friends at Big Pharma lobbying board .... good grief.
I think the problem is trade agreements, some countries don’t allow USA companies to pass on development costs to foreign buyers. I have not researched this, but several people have told me that’s the issue.
Since most newer drugs are patented, are the drugs being sold in Canada actually made in the US and imported into
Canada?
There are too many drugs already.
Drugs developed and patented in the U.S. are just as expensive in Canada. The real problem is that Big Pharma has been allowed to evergreen drugs by Congress and the FDA, i.e. allowing them to make very minor changes to dosage levels, very minor formula adjustment; and, then allow Big Pharma to restart the patent clock.
Maybe drug companies could redirect some advertising $$ into research and I wouldn't have to see 12 drug ads every commercial break. Win-win.
Townhall can quit shilling for the pharma industry anytime now. They really can.
Street Corner Pharmacists Union agrees ???
Nah, it’s all they know. Support free trade for everything but pharma
The idea that we ger to fund all the pharma research and the rest of the world gets to enjoy the results at a much reduced cost is patently idiotic!
I’ll be honest, I have worked for big pharama in the past - they outsource just about everything they can to 3rd world hell-holes (people, jobs,manufacturing, factories etc) , and then claim in ‘too dangerous’ to allow US citizens to buy drugs from Canada of all places....yea right.
My type 1 diabetic son gets his insulin from Canada ... $30 a vial versus $280. Cannot afford Obamacare but it wouldn’t matter anyway because the deductible is $6,000.
Americans not only face a government-enforced monopoly for pharmacueticals when they go to buy drugs, as tax-payers they also get stripped when government itself buys drugs for its welfare programs
When I die, I want to be reborn as a Pharmaceutical executive.
The rest-of-the world using their monopsony power or threats not to respect patents basically force the pharmas to sell drugs at marginal costs. So the US consumer, directly or indirectly, is forced to pay for 100% of the fixed R&D costs.
So basically what they are saying is “you proles in the USA are required to pay for all the pharmacological innovations for the entire world”, “and when single payer is imposed on you we don’t want to hear your bitching”.
Like anyone else who loses their sweet pumped-up margin deal they’ll grumble and grouse about it. But I suspect they will go right on selling drugs under the new ground rules.
BigPharma propaganda. I should not have to pay $7/pill in the US for the same Japanese made drug that I can purchase from Canada for $1/pill.
I do not consent to being a slave to BigPharma.
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