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 PharmacyChecker.com | Oct 14, 2014 | Advocacy, FDA
If you receive an e-mail or see a web page offering to sell you anything that cures, prevents, or treats Ebola, you can be sure it’s a scam. That’s because there currently aren’t any drugs that prevent or treat Ebola, though there are vaccines and treatments in the works. If you see any companies that sell these falsely marketed products, report them to the FTC or FDA.
For more, check out the FTC blog.
Tagged with: Ebola, FDA, FTC, Online Pharmacy Scams
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Sep 26, 2014 | Advocacy, Online Pharmacies, Pharmaceutical Industry
In George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, published in 1949, we find a future in which totalitarian, one-party rule has run amuck on a global scale. It is a world in which whatever “The Party” (think Communist or Nazis) states is a fact must be believed, regardless of the obtuse logic and propagandistic origins of that so called “fact.” The quintessential and frightening example provided by Orwell is the notion that 2+2=5 if The Party Say’s so. When I attended the Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) conference last week, it felt as if many people were willing to believe absurd notions about online pharmacies. Most positions espoused at PSM’s conference support the following fallacious statement: IF an online pharmacy is not based in the U.S. and sells prescription drugs to the U.S. THEN it is dangerous. They essentially put on a show in which different people in a myriad of ways communicate that 2+2=5.
The event, called the PSM Interchange, is a Lion’s Den with many people who are directly paid by drug companies, indirectly paid by drug companies, U.S. pharmacies or their trade groups, or those who would like to be paid by the aforementioned entities someday, either directly or indirectly. PSM’s stated mission, “working together to protect the safety of your prescription drugs,” is, it seems, a smoke screen for big drug companies working together to keep drug prices as high as possible in their most cherished market – America. (more…)
Tagged with: CanaRx, Kenneth "mac" McCall, Libby Baney, Maine, Partnership for Safe Medicine, Peter Pitts, phrma, PSM, Todd Brown
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Sep 17, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, Personal Drug Importation
The opinions and research of two Americans, published this week in local newspapers, epitomize the position of millions of Americans: drug prices are too high and safe personal drug importation is a smart way to afford medication. Tom Kennedy compared prices between the U.S. and Canada in 2003, and he is doing it again 11 years later. His guest opinion in the Billings Gazette has shown that U.S. prices have increased 153% for the drugs he tracked since 2003, far outpacing the rise in income and cost of living. He has some good economic insight and analysis, and I recommend reading his whole opinion, which you can find here.
David Di Saia, from North Providence, Rhode Island, found that he could save $480 a year by using a Canadian pharmacy instead of the pharmacy associated with his Medicare plan. And that’s just the savings for one medication! Imagine the savings if he had to order more than one drug. You can read his story, which is “sad, but true” on the Valley Breeze website.
Tagged with: Billings Gazette, Drug Prices, Valley Breeze
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Aug 29, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacies
In writing about the web domain company EasyDNS’ online pharmacy policy, Mike Masnick, founder of award-winning technology and business innovation blog Techdirt, makes the following observation:
“Fake and dangerous drugs from rogue pharmacies are a real (if relatively small) problem. Legitimate foreign pharmacies selling into the US at cheaper prices are a made up problem by US drug companies. But those US drug companies like to take the “small” problem, and blame it on any non-US pharmacy in an attempt to block out the competition.”
Thank you Mike for expressing that so clearly! The essence of TechDirt is to “analyze and offer insight into news stories about changes in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect companies’ ability to innovate and grow.” Innovation via the Internet has allowed consumers who can’t afford their medicine domestically to access it through foreign pharmacies. The pharmaceutical industry and its well-funded agents are getting away with murder by pressuring online “gatekeepers” such as domain registrars, search engines, and credit card companies to disallow service to pharmacies that American consumers have come to rely on.
To some in the public health community and in government, Mike’s expression of rogue online pharmacies as a “relatively small” problem” may come across as flippant and even naïve – but it cuts much deeper than that. The question is relative to what? If he means relative to the public health crisis of high drug prices in America then Mike is entirely correct: rogue online pharmacies are a small problem compared to high drug prices in America. Far more Americans are getting sick and/or dying because they can’t afford medication at home than they are from dangerous online pharmacy purchases.
That does not excuse the actions of rogue pharmacy websites that endanger the health of consumers. That’s precisely why EasyDNS’ decision to only provide service to online pharmacies if they are approved by LegitScript or PharmacyChecker is visionary. It does not let dangerous pharmacy websites exist, but it refuses to succumb to a protectionist, anti-consumer, big pharma initiative to snuff out innovative business models – safe international online pharmacy – that hinder their profit-making machine and grossly disadvantage consumers.
Rock on TechDirt!
Tagged with: LegitScript, Mike Masnick, pharmacychecker, rogue online pharmacies, Techdirt
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Aug 22, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Safety, Internet Censorship, Online Pharmacies, Rogue Online Pharmacies
I’m writing this blog post to say thank you to a domain registrar called EasyDNS and its CEO, Mark Jeftovic, and to talk about what’s up with registrars and online pharmacies, as it could affect your online access to safe and affordable medication. EasyDNS’s new online pharmacy policy denies service to rogue online pharmacies but not safe online pharmacies. It will accomplish this policy by providing service to online pharmacies only if they are approved by LegitScript or PharmacyChecker.
In short, domain registrars are companies that help people obtain website names; names such as www.rxrights.org, www.doctorswithoutborders.org, www.WebMD.com, www.nytimes.com, etc. The most popular of these registrars in America is Go Daddy. If all registrars deny service to a person or a company, such as a rogue online pharmacy, then it cannot reach the public. If all registrars deny service to safe online pharmacies with very low drug prices then the public will not have access to them.
Our friends at RxRights gave a strong shout out to EasyDNS this week as well.
You might be thinking that this is no big deal. Who wouldn’t want to stop rogue pharmacy sites but allow safe, low-cost online pharmacies to operate? Well, earlier this year the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) sent letters out to 200 registrars telling them to take down websites that NABP doesn’t recommend. No matter how safe it might be, the NABP does not recommend any international online pharmacy that sells to Americans, instead unfairly calling them rogue sites.
Popular Internet freedom blog Techdirt published an article about NABP called, “Pharmacy Group Lies To Registrars: If We Complain About A Site, It Must Be Taken Down No Questions Asked.” It wrote: “The NABP is basically an organization designed to artificially inflate the price of drugs in the US, cynically using highly questionable claims to pretend that they’re focused on ‘public safety.’”
For the record, there is not a single reported death by a person who ordered from an international online pharmacy, ones that NABP calls “rogue,” that requires a valid prescription and fills orders through licensed pharmacies. The industry has been around for about fifteen years now. (more…)
Tagged with: Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, EasyDNS, LegitScript, NABP, Registrars
