Posted on 02/15/2020 3:33:47 PM PST by Hojczyk
China could effectively shut down America’s healthcare system within months given the one-party state’s “global chokehold” on the manufacturing of medicines and medical supplies, explained Rosemary Gibson, author of China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.
Mansour noted how the coronavirus outbreak in China has exposed America’s dangerous dependence on Chinese production of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production.
Gibson said, “If China shuts the door on exports of medicines and the ingredients to make them, within a couple of months our pharmacies would be empty. Our healthcare system would cease to function. That’s how dependent we are.”
“Another shocking thing I discovered is that India and its huge generic [drug] industry — they’re the top generic producer in the world, although I think China’s going to overtake them in about five to ten years — even India depends on China,” Gibson stated.” [India’s] generic industry would shut down within weeks and months without those core components, and you see it in the Indian press, right now, that they’re already concerned about this because this coronavirus in China is really disrupting supply chains.”
China uses predatory mercantilist policies — including dumping — to undercut American and Western drug manufacturers, just as the communist state did with steel and other commodities, noted Mansour.
Eighty-five percent of the America’s strategic national stockpile of medicines and medical supplies depends on China, Gibson noted.
Gibson concluded, “We have to diversify away from China and bring some manufacturing of essential medicines back home to this country.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Electronic materials from my lab 35 years ago were selling in Japan, in Taiwan, in South Korea, but PRC had no idea how to use them. Guess what?
If American pharma had to ramp up to make the generics that China is now making, they could do it very quickly.
Granted there are diseases and health issues that just plain happen, even to healthly folk. But isn’t obesity the number one health problem in the US?
If people would take better care of their bodies (burn what you eat, and back off on the high carb drinks) there would be a vast improvement of the health of people as a whole. Smaller bodies would make for a smaller drug industry.
As a grain and livestock farmer/steel fabricator until 2001, I had no problem burning calories. But then becoming a truck driver, I had to face it: I had to cut back on fats and carbs. I almost daily see other drivers load up on fatty foods and carb loaded drinks. They are abusing their bodies, and it is sad to see. I have my wife to thank for preparing healthy portions for my lunch box, and for the dinner table. She will be 63 next week, and is still slim. That motivates me more than anything to stay slim as well.
The Chinese are the very best at mimicry, but they can’t innovate to save their lives.
Don’t count on getting any drugs from Canada — we get ours from the same sources you do.
I gave up trying to figure out how China got a stronghold on our drugs and the ingredients in the drugs we do manufacture. There is lots of talk about them undercutting prices, capturing the markets, and then jacking up the price, but there didn’t seem to be any such fluctuations in retail prices. Our big pharma is rich, but doesn’t seem to be making anything. It’s a mess, and a scary one.
Same with the Japanese...they make some great stuff sort of like the Swiss of Asia.
And your basis for that opinion is . . . ?
Not that high until we can get our own industry spun back up. Too high a tariff could crash our own economy; it needs to be high enough to encourage US redevelopment, but low enough that it doesn’t make the goods unattainable for our people and industry. It takes time to spin up factories and such.
Because as noted in the article, Canada’s drugs are made in China too, and India can’t make the drugs without parts from China.
Did you not read it?
No, it can’t. Most of the facilities to mass produce common meds in the US were not just closed but razed and the equipment sold to China.
Apparently they pay American officials too well for any of them to notice. This situation must be exterminated.
China has never forgiven the West for the Opium Wars, they have been looking for revenge ever since.
No one. A 300% tariff would just make domestic suppliers more competitive at any price point below the tariff; it does not mean that prices would rise to the level of the tariff. Thus a Chinese drug that would sell for $10 would cost $40 after the tariff. A domestic company that could then market the same drug for $15 (a 50% increase) would undersell the Chinese. There would be a price rise but it would not be to full price of the tariff. No one likes prices increases but the dependency on Chinese suppliers is dangerous.
Because they don’t innovate. How many patents have one out of China. Everything they do is copying other’s inventions.
https://www.rappler.com/technology/features/196051-look-iphone-x-clones-china
Trump can get rid of the regulations and red tape AND he will if this is a HUGE problem!!! I agree with you this country can do AMAZING things if the damn government would get out of our way!!! This is one way to get our companies home again!!!
I have for a number of years kept a 15 month supply of my heart medicine on hand. Fortunately I take only one drug.
Because I can pay cash (it’s cheaper than via insurance through a Sam’s Plus Membership) it makes it easy to keep that far ahead on it. I just ordered an additional 90 day supply. It has a 3 year shelf life so I simply rotate by fill date.
It’s ironic, I have been preaching for years on this and when the Greece situation was really bad & people were unable to get medicines I reminded some family / friends of this. No one did anything. They frame their entire lives around thinking “it has never happened here so it can’t happen here” in relation to everything.
The “Normalcy Bias” is going to kill a lot of people if we have a true Black Swan event.
Sorry, but it would not take long to revamp, at all.
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