Is Buying Drugs from Canada “Absurd”? Maybe — But So Is Our Entire Healthcare System
American Prospect editor and healthcare policy opinion leader Ezra Klein recently had this to say about pending legislation that may, once and for all, legalize buying prescription drugs from Canada:
THE ABSURDITY OF DRUG IMPORTATION
Byron Dorgan’s office just sent out a press release noting that Obama supports the Dorgan-Snowe bill to allow importation of “lower-priced, Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs from other countries,” and they expect passage to be quick and clean. They’re probably right. But it’s always worth remembering what’s embedded in the drug importation — or, as some call it, “reimportation” — idea.
What the bill allows you to do, quite simply, is go to Canada and pick up a pack of Lipitor. But Lipitor is made by an American company in an American factory. Canada imports the drug. In theory, that should impose the extra cost on Canada and it should be cheaper in America. But it isn’t.
Canada has a national health care system that bargains down drug prices. They are so effective at it that it is literally cheaper for American consumers to buy back American-produced pharmaceuticals that drug companies have already sold at a profit to Canada than it is to buy from the producers directly. It’s inane. And allowing drug reimportation does not solve this problem. It dramatizes it.
We couldn’t agree more. As a commenter on Klein’s post puts it: “Drug re-importation is just outsourcing our law making. Nothing more than a straight admission that Congress is incapable of doing its job.”
We wholeheartedly agree.
We’d love it if Americans didn’t have to pay the highest drug prices in the world.
We’d love it if our legislators could stand up to Big Pharma instead of doing their bidding — and protecting their profits — at every turn.
We’d love it if Medicare were allowed to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma, to bring costs down to a reasonable level and eliminate the “doughnut hole” in drug coverage.
We’d love it if Congress were capable of doing its job — which should entail a complete overhaul of our broken healthcare system.
But until — and unless — that happens, the “absurd” solution of buying American drugs from Canada is the best answer we’ve got.
