With nostalgia, I’m announcing that PharmacyCheckerBlog will no longer be updated with new posts effective today. If you’re looking for similar news, analysis, and editorial efforts, check out PolicyPrescription.com.
Over 20 years ago, pharmacies in Canada began selling prescription drugs to Americans over the Internet. PharmacyChecker.com opened its virtual doors in 2003 to provide consumers, mostly in America, with information that helps them find the most affordable and safe prescription drugs from online pharmacies, including those located in Canada and other countries. This made the pharmaceutical industry mad at us. The industry doesn’t want Americans to have access to lower drug prices in other countries. They went on the attack.
Eleven years ago, PharmacyCheckerBlog was launched in large part to fight back against efforts funded by the pharmaceutical industry to discredit PharmacyChecker and sow disinformation about online pharmacies that scared Americans away from obtaining safe and more affordable prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.
The reality is that, over the years, PharmacyCheckerBlog has become a website where I write posts mostly about public policy, politics, and law as it relates to drug prices, drug importation, online pharmacies, and safety. I enjoy the subject matter and advocating for lower prescription prices in America – and pushing back against the misinformation propagated by Big Pharma! I will continue doing so at a new website called PolicyPrescription.com.
PharmacyChecker will continue fighting back! For those posts, you’ll need to go to PharmacyChecker.com.
For a fuller history of PharmacyCheckerBlog, click here.
For the benefit of consumers, I published a longish but straightforward explanation of the state wholesale drug importation bills, laws, and programs and how they differ from personal importation. I reviewed the drug relabeling section of Florida’s Drug Importation Program submission to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and it really tells a story. Many if not most of the drugs that states propose to import from Canada are not made in Canada or the U.S. Both countries import a majority of their pharmaceuticals. They often come from the same countries and factories and are the exact same drugs. The reason the prices are so high in the U.S. is usually blamed on patents, which lead to what some call monopolistic pricing. Another reason drug prices are so much higher in the U.S. is that drug manufacturers have had a monopoly on commercial importation. It’s a very special protection that states are trying to remove through these programs.
These are unique times we’re living in, so before I criticize this guy for his Big Pharma love, I feel compelled to hand him a well-earned compliment: Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) acted heroically in voting to impeach former President Trump in the wake of the violent January 6th assault on Congress. Whether or not you agree with Burr’s vote, history shows politicians rarely cross the aisle to impeach someone in their own party. Senator Burr’s vote was courageous. I stand by that even though he decided not to run for re-election in 2022.
People (like me) often accuse politicians of carrying water for Big Pharma so that they will receive large campaign contributions from the industry. During Sen. Burr’s last campaign in 2016, he received over $200,000 in campaign contributions from drug companies. These contributions contributed to him receiving an F grade on drug prices on the Prescription Justice Congressional Report Card. Even though he is not facing an election in 2022, Sen. Burr continues to espouse public policy beliefs and talking points of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. So maybe he is genuinely a believer in the pharmaceutical industry being able to charge anything it wants for life-saving medications because that’s the business model supposedly supporting wonderful advances in biomedical research. Maybe.
Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice
Professor Stephen Salant. Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Michigan
This week, I’m proud to announce that I teamed up with Stephen Salant, PhD, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Michigan, to write an op-ed called “The one-two punch to knock out high drug prices.” Professor Salant was also an economist with the Federal Reserve Board and the Rand Corporation. Our article, published today in The Hill, recommends legislation and regulatory reforms that would promote safe prescription drug importation and implement a most favored nation system of drug pricing for Medicare. The recommendations are based on executive orders from the Trump administration and Democratic legislation from the previous Congress. They should have intense bipartisan support.
Lots of others have written articles advocating similar reforms, but our article employs new economic theory articulated by Dr. Salant in a paper called Arbitrage Deterrence: A Theory of International Drug Pricing. You can read the op-ed and the paper (if you have strong math skills) but the gist is that: 1) Promoting drug importation, both personal and wholesale would lead to lower domestic but higher foreign drug prices, 2) Simultaneously implementing a strong system for international reference pricing would curtail the aforementioned drug price increases and create a noble cycle of lower and reasonable foreign and domestic prices, and 3) the savings to the U.S. government would be more than enough to subsidize biopharmaceutical research to offset lower R&D investments from drug companies.
With lies and deception, Big Pharma has used the threat posed by rogue websites and counterfeit drugs to push back against U.S. state legislation to gain access to lower drug prices in Canada. Regardless, several states have passed laws toward creating importation programs: Colorado, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Vermont. Simple summary: Canada’s brand drugs are priced much lower and states want access to them. These state laws have largely been confined to wholesale drug importation. That is, until this week when California Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager introduced the Affordable Prescription Drug Importation Act, AB 458. The bill not only calls for wholesale importation from Canada – but also personal drug importation from Canada and other countries, subject to Section 804 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It’s about time!
The bill states:
“This bill would authorize an individual to import a prescription drug only for use by that individual or a member of that individual’s immediate family from a foreign pharmacy if specified requirements are met. The bill would prohibit an individual from, among other things, importing a prescription drug for resale or a controlled substance.”
This is a huge step in the right direction because Americans are already buying medications internationally. Millions have done so from safe international online pharmacies – and the law technically permits this through enforcement discretion, but they should have “express permission.” As I stated in a press release yesterday:
The Rand Corporation has released an impressive study showing that brand name drugs cost far more in the United States than in other countries – on average 344% more. For those of you looking for a methodologically strong analysis of international drug prices and a history of related studies, this is the report for you. In looking at all drugs, brand and generic, the percentage goes down to 256%. That’s because, as the report shows, generic drugs in the U.S. were found to be priced at 86% of those in other countries. The report was based on drug prices from 2018.
The report’s title is very descriptive of its contents: “International Prescription Drug Price Comparisons: Current Empirical Estimates and Comparisons with Previous Studies”
Explaining the report’s approach in the simplest terms: it accomplishes its main objectives by creating price indices for 32 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and comparing them for all drugs, brand name and generic. That’s the report’s main focus. It has additional results for other categories, notably biologic drugs and the top 60 drugs in terms of sales. For biologics, which are generally the most expensive prescription products, U.S. prices are on average 295% the international price. For the top 60 drugs by sales, U.S prices are on average 394% higher.
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A source for news and analysis about drug prices and safety, online pharmacies and personal drug importation, published on behalf of American consumers.
