by Tod Cooperman, MD, President, PharmacyChecker.com, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com | Oct 3, 2012 | Drug Prices, FDA, Online Pharmacies
A new U.S. FDA public education campaign called BeSafeRx (www.fda.gov/BeSafeRx) would be much more helpful if it were more truthful. In launching the campaign, designed to alert consumers to the potential dangers of online pharmacies, the FDA Commissioner said, “If the low prices seem too good to be true, they probably are.” In actuality, low prices from online pharmacies outside the U.S. are often quite real and are offered from licensed pharmacies selling genuine products. The problem is that U.S. prices are just unbelievably high. The U.S. pharmaceutical and pharmacy industries (which don’t want to lose profits and consumers to lower priced pharmacies) in other countries, have come out as big supporters of BeSafeRx.
Correctly, the FDA alerts consumers that there are thousands of dangerous pharmacy sites that should be avoided, but safe international pharmacies do exist. Independent studies and over a decade of experience show the high degree of safety Americans can find in personally imported medication from online pharmacies which have been properly credentialed by PharmacyChecker.com. For many Americans they provide the only way to afford their medicine. International online pharmacies verified by PharmacyChecker.com require prescriptions and sell genuine medication at prices much lower than available domestically: often 90% lower.
The big losers of FDA’s online pharmacy campaign are American consumers and taxpayers. American consumers lose by having to pay much higher prices in U.S. pharmacies, or, tragically, by not taking their medication at all. In 2010, 48 million Americans did not fill a prescription due to high drug prices, according the Commonwealth Fund. This is a national health crisis, which is only getting worse. As taxpayers, we lose because when people end up getting sick by not taking needed medication they are more likely to end up in emergency rooms across the county incurring medical costs paid for by our dwindling national coffers (you and me).
Remember, our Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department (which oversees the FDA) – Kathleen Sebelius – operated her own drug importation program as Governor of Kansas. During her tenure, consumers could order prescription medication from pharmacies in the Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK found through the State of Kansas website. If it was safe then it is safe now. It appears that only the political calculation has changed in perverse deference to the big pharmaceutical companies.
Tod Cooperman, MD, President, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President
PharmacyChecker.com
Tagged with: BeSafeRx, Drug Prices, FDA, Kathleen Sebelius
by Tod Cooperman, MD, President, PharmacyChecker.com, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com | Jul 24, 2012 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacies, Pharmaceutical Industry
A new organization, the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP) – safemedsonline.org – made its debut yesterday. Unfortunately, the group seems more focused on keeping its big corporate members in the good graces of the pharmaceutical industry and government than on helping American consumers. In fact, its actions may endanger public health.
This should come as no surprise, as the plan to create the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies was hatched by the White House Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator in 2010 which, as previously reported here, was handed the plan by the pharmaceutical industry. The plan fit very well with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) legislation which was eventually shelved.
The Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies has two main activities. The first is to educate, or more accurately, “scare,” the public away from using “illegal” pharmacies, which appear to include licensed and safe pharmacies outside the U.S. which sell genuine but lower priced medicine to Americans. The second is to work with the U.S. government to “shut down” chosen online pharmacies by blocking their ability to appear in online searches and to accept payments.
CSIP has handed over the job of deciding which online pharmacies are okay to LegitScript, which has its own suspect past and intentions. All non-US online pharmacies are branded “not approved” by LegitScript on the basis that it’s technically illegal to personally import most medications – even though the government, in its wisdom, has permitted it. Moreover, it appears that LegitScript is essentially a private sector extension of the FDA as evidenced by its $2.6 million government contract.
As part of its launch, the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies produced a scare video showing a caring, young woman go online to research and order lower-priced medication online for an elderly relative. The relative then falls ill and the young woman worries that the medicine may have been fake or even “rat poison” and, through the miracle of video, the clock is rolled back, the medicine is never ordered, and all is somehow well without the medicine.
This far-fetched horror flick is far more likely to scare people away from affordable medicine than keep them safe. It’s an indisputable fact that for more than a decade millions of Americans, many of whom have trouble paying for prescription medication in the United States, have safely filled their prescriptions, at much lower prices, through online pharmacies in Canada and other countries. Independent research has also shown that medicine ordered from sites approved by PharmacyChecker.com or the VIPPS Program is genuine. If CSIP’s well-funded public relations team could have found a person who was actually injured by ordering medicine with a prescription from an online pharmacy, they would not have had to create a fictitious character and story.
It is well document that tens of tens of millions of Americans go without medication each year due to cost and suffer real illness as a result. Keeping them “safe” means helping Americans find affordable medicine – not cutting a lifeline to it.
There are plenty of rogue pharmacies out there which CSIP can help root out – ones that sell fake medicine and don’t require prescriptions. We hope CSIP decides to focus all of its attention on these real dangers. If not, the real horror story could turn out to be CSIP itself when its actions increase the number of people who go without needed medication or are left impoverished due to prices at pharmacies of which CSIP “approves.”
Tagged with: Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies, CSIP, Drug Prices, LegitScript, Online Pharmacies, Online Pharmacy Verification Services, PIPA, SOPA
by Tod Cooperman, MD, President, PharmacyChecker.com, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com | Apr 23, 2012 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacy Verification Services, Personal Drug Importation
The main Op-Ed article in today’s New York Times, “The Wrong Way to Stop Fake Drugs,” calls for the legalization of personal drug importation from credentialed international online pharmacies, such as those approved in the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program. Authored by Roger Bate, a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, the central message of the piece is that the technical ban on personal drug importation does not help the fight against counterfeit drugs but does discourage Americans from getting needed medication. We couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Bate offers evidence-based and compassionate approaches to help uninsured/underinsured Americans obtain medication at affordable prices and reduce the threat of counterfeit medication domestically and abroad. For more on this story see today’s press release
For the past year, Americans who buy medication from international online pharmacies have engaged through RxRights.org to help stop government actions that could block their online access to safe and affordable medication. Taking the cue from this latest op-ed, Americans should start asking their leaders to pass legislation directing the FDA to provide accurate information about online pharmacies. At the very least, the FDA should cease its categorical warning against all international online pharmacies for the simple reason that some are very safe and can help more Americans afford needed medications.
We looked at the top five brand name drugs by sales today to highlight the incredible price discrepancies between US pharmacy and international online pharmacy prices.
Tagged with: affordable prescriptions, international pharmacies, New York Times, Online Pharmacies, prescription drug importation, prescription legislation, Roger Bate
