by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Nov 4, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Politics
No matter how you vote today, or which party you like (if one at all), you may have ended up on this blog because you’re tired of high drug prices or struggling to afford medications you need. PharmacyChecker.com advocates for maximizing consumer-access to the lowest cost, safe and effective medications. We believe that it’s completely unacceptable and unnecessary for tens of millions of Americans to skip filling prescriptions each year because of cost. High drug prices in America are a public health crisis.
Access to affordable medication is a global public health priority and many people view it as a human right. According to the World Health Organization, ten million deaths could be prevented globally by improving access to safe and affordable medication. We strongly believe that much more can and should be done at the global level to help citizens of developing countries obtain life-saving medicines.
Our advocacy focus is – not surprisingly – “online access” to lower-cost medications, which requires an open and free Internet through which consumers can buy medication from safe international online pharmacies. We are a member of the RxRights.org coalition, which focusses on safe personal drug importation through verified international online pharmacies. We strongly encourage you to join them. They have a following of almost 85,000 Americans. Joining is free and for those of you activist-types it could be fun.
There are multinational pharmaceutical corporate forces aligned with willing politicians who accept their campaign contributions to prevent you from obtaining safe lower cost medications from outside the U.S. Pushing back and promoting online access to safe and affordable medication is not a liberal or conservative effort. It’s a big tent, non-partisan issue that draws consumers from all sides of the political fence who are tired of having to pay the world’s highest drug prices.
So, as long as you’re done voting, take this time to check out RxRights and stand up for more affordable medications!
Tagged with: advocate, election day 2014, RxRights
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 28, 2014 | Internet Censorship
A Letter to the ICANN Community
Today, the Wall Street Journal reported on the subject of rogue online pharmacies and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The gist of the article is that ICANN is not doing enough to stop dangerous pharmacy websites. There is reason to believe that ICANN could do more but it could also do too much to the detriment of consumers who cannot afford medication locally. There’s an appropriate middle ground for getting rid of rogue pharmacy sites, but not overreaching and ending online access to safe and affordable medication. Willfully ending such access threatens the public health and treads on global norms relating to human rights and access to medications.
Earlier this month I attended an ICANN conference for the first time, which was in Los Angeles. We’ve written on several occasions about the application by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) to ICANN to operate a new generic top level domain (gTLD) called “.pharmacy”. To remind many of our readers, gTLDs are the endings of websites, such as .com, .org, .gov, .edu, .int, etc. The bottom line here is that we and many others believe that NABP, if its application is successful, will use its new ICANN-conferred legitimacy to stifle competition, mislead the public about online pharmacies, and in doing so curtail access by Americans and consumers worldwide to safe and affordable medication online.
I met many dedicated, interesting and well-informed people at the ICANN conference, including those serving within the ICANN community and others following it closely. To follow up with them I wrote the following letter.
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Tagged with: human rights, ICANN, NABP, pharmacy, Wall Street Journal
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 23, 2014 | Counterfeit Drugs, FDA, Rogue Online Pharmacies
When you’re fighting for something you believe in sometimes you lose perspective, and that can lead to overreaction and self-righteous indignation. I’ve been very critical of the FDA because I believe the agency is not doing right by Americans consumers on the issue of online pharmacies and personal drug importation. FDA seems incapable of admitting that there are safe international online pharmacies that help Americans afford medication, and its BeSafeRx program is right out of the big pharma playbook; and…wait, wait, there I go again…
The FDA, specifically its Office of Criminal Investigations, expends a lot of time and energy tracking down people who are intentionally selling fake, expired, or otherwise clearly dangerous pharmaceuticals. Those efforts save lives and ought to instill fear in those perpetrating these acts or those considering doing so. We should and do applaud FDA for those efforts. (more…)
Tagged with: Enforcement, OCI, Office of Criminal Investigations, public health
