If I Can Buy Skis in Canada, Why Can’t I Buy Prescription Drugs?
Ed Wallace, a Dallas/Fort Worth radio talk show host, recently penned a great column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called “The Myth of Free Trade,” in which he lambasts U.S. government hypocrisy on trade policy and endorses Americans purchasing their prescription medications from Canada.
Here’s an excerpt:
Elected officials support many enduring myths that sound not just good but economically reasonable. They oversimplify them in business logic that helps America’s financial future sound potentially exciting. Once you get past the ostensible intelligence of the sales pitch, though, the facts of the real world intrude. That they are myths may be scarier than anything in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but they are -– equally fanciful tales.
The first is the myth of free trade…
Remember when it was big news how many American senior citizens were traveling into Canada to fill their prescriptions? In Canada they could buy their prescription drugs at incredible discounts, both because of the exchange rate and because the Canadian government negotiates lower costs on those drugs in its citizens’ behalf.
Many of our elderly simply couldn’t afford to buy those life-saving drugs in the States. And you’d think Americans would have every right to shop in Canada for cheaper drugs: NAFTA was sold to us as enabling total free trade between us, Canada and Mexico.
Yet, as far as Washington was concerned, old folks could go to Whistler, Canada, and purchase ski gear all they wanted –- but don’t even try to cross the border for cheaper drugs that was proving to save lives.
You tell ‘em, Ed!
