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Importing Prescription Drugs Won’t Solve Cost Issues
Two big issues pop out. One, our market is too large. Canada for instance cannot provide enough drugs for a few states much less the entire country. They would run out. Two, safety. Nothing prevents a country from setting up an address in Canada, for example, and marketing their inferior / unsafe drugs as Canadian.
Efforts to import prescription drugs from Canada received a big boost in May when President Donald Trump reiterated his support for the proposal. Trump reportedly directed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to work with Florida, which is one of 16 states pursuing importation legislation, to get the necessary federal approvals as quickly as possible. According to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, the president is "chomping at the bit for this solution to lower drug prices."Read the entire article at the link.Widescale drug importation from Canada, however, is not a practical solution to this problem. It is a distraction from efforts to address the real prescription drug cost drivers. In the words of Secretary Azar, it's "a gimmick." Trump and legislators should redirect their efforts to proposals that could actually make a difference short term and long term in lowering costs.Perhaps conflating its geographic size, importation proponents seem to overlook Canada's small population, which is less than California's. There's no way that our neighbors to the north could supply the U.S. market -- or even a handful of states -- with all of its prescription drug needs. According to the Canadian Pharmacists Journal, Canada's drug supply would run out in 224 days if merely 10% of U.S. prescriptions were filled with Canadian drugs. The former Health Minister of Canada said, "Canada cannot be the drugstore for the United States."
Yet the bigger problem with drug importation is not logistics but safety. While bona fide Canadian drugs are surely safe, there's just no way to ensure that drugs marketed as Canadian are actually Canadian. It's easy for a supplier in, say, Turkey to set up a "Canadian" drug website and route its product through a Canadian address. Federal investigations have repeatedly found drugs that supposedly came from Canada really originated in other nations.
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration found that nearly half of the imported drugs intercepted from four developing countries were marketed as "Canadian." They found that the vast majority -- some 85% -- of "Canadian" drugs actually came from 27 other countries. Last year, Canadadrugs.com was fined $34 million by U.S. prosecutors for selling two cancer drugs with no active pharmaceutical ingredients.
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Originally Posted by Common
