by PharmacyChecker.com | Apr 4, 2014 | Advocacy, FDA, Healthcare Reform
Section 708 of the Food and Drug Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 allows U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to destroy your imported prescription orders. Even if the drug is the real deal, safe and effective, it can be destroyed. But wait! The law can’t take effect until the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, publishes regulations that provide Americans the opportunity to contest when their medications are seized by CBP. She is drafting those regulations right now, which will be followed by a period for public comment. Let her know that she is now responsible for protecting your access to affordable, imported medication. She should understand. As governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius adopted a personal drug importation program by providing information online that helped residents find lower cost medications from licensed foreign pharmacies.
Sign the Petition!
Tagged with: Food and Drug Safety and Innovation Act of 2012, Kathleen Sebelius, Section 708
by Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com and Sam Werbalowsky, Pharmacychecker.com | Feb 28, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices
Testifying before Congress was the last place I expected to see Seth Rogen, star of movies Superbad and Knocked Up. But there he was, in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, speaking about his family’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease in order to raise awareness about its effects, including the high costs of treatment.
Although there is no known cure for Alzheimer’s or its progression, there is medication that can help alleviate symptoms, such as memory loss and confusion. Rogen points out that he can’t imagine how patients on limited incomes treat Alzheimer’s and that it is the most “costly condition in the United States…where in a country for a dollar and twenty-nine cents you can get a taco made out of Doritos.” We thought it would be helpful to show how much Americans can save on Alzheimer’s medication by ordering from a verified international online pharmacy. Looking at one brand name and two generic medications, we found an average savings of 72%.
Savings on 3-month Supplies of Alzheimer’s Medication
U.S. Pharmacy Price from Rite-Aid in New York City. International Online Pharmacy Price taken from PharmacyChecker.com.
*Price calculated from 90 pills
+Price calculated from 100 pills
Tagged with: Alzheimer's Disease, Appropriations, Congress, Seth Rogen
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jan 31, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry
Due to its lobbying efforts against drug importation reform to lower medication costs and funding of groups that mislead Americans about online pharmacies, scaring them away from safe and affordable medication sold outside the U.S., we often criticize Big Pharma on this blog. Speaking somewhat personally, I question myself sometimes whether they are deserving of such constant criticism. And then I read Daniel Hoffman from Philly.com in “Drug Prices: Higher and Higher” – and I’m reminded that they are!
Big Pharma is a on global government relations blitzkrieg to pressure countries into raising drug prices, spouting nonsense that the higher drug prices are supported by lower health care costs overall. Dr. Hoffman writes about pharma’s efforts in Germany to end a practice that enables doctors and other healthcare professionals to determine if new medications are truly an advance over old ones and merit higher drug prices. If they don’t then the government insurance plans will not reimburse for those products at a higher rate than older, proven medications. Seems fair!
Dr. Hoffman writes that India, with an incredibly dynamic pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, fights back against what that country views as overly aggressive intellectual property claims by Western drug companies. Sometimes India even views those patents as a threat to public health, and when it does it issues a “compulsory license” – the right to manufacture a generic even though there’s a patent in place.
I contend that this tactic can be abused by governments pressured by their own pharmaceutical industries – such as India. However, sometimes they are needed to save lives. What made me sick was a comment made by the CEO of Bayer, Marijib Dekkers, about India’s issuing a compulsory license for the drug Nexavar, which treats late stage kidney cancer. I’d prefer to quote a long section from Hoffman’s piece:
“We did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians,” Marijn Dekkers declared with unconcealed disdain. “We developed it for western patients who can afford it.”
A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders later claimed that Dekkers represents ” ‘everything that is wrong’ with the multinational pharmaceutical industry.” (See here.)
That may be one way of looking at it. The other is that Dekkers is just more candid in admitting that pharma is all about making money and if millions of people have to die as a result, that’s just the way it is.
So are we being too hard on Big Pharma? The answer is no.
Tagged with: Bayer, Daniel Hoffman, Nexavar
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jan 16, 2014 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, Online Pharmacies
The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to cover the issue of high drug prices in the U.S. with an article about Americans purchasing medication from international online pharmacies. The “Ins, outs of getting meds overseas” provides useful information for consumers, most importantly that Americans ordering medication internationally should only do so from credentialed online pharmacies and that the FDA, despite technical prohibitions on personal drug importation, does not prosecute Americans for doing so.
I was particularly intrigued by the remarks of one physician when asked about his patients buying medication from international online pharmacies. He sheds a lot of light on two issues: 1) the serious health crisis surrounding Americans not adhering to prescriptions (not taking their meds) because of high drug costs, and 2) the fundamental difference between online pharmacies that require a prescription and those that don’t. In describing his conversation with cardiologist David Becker, journalist Paul Jablow writes:
When patients ask him to give them a written prescription rather than sending the scripts electronically to a pharmacy, he says he assumes they’re buying overseas from a reputable pharmacy, and “I have no problem with that.” What concerns him more, he says, are the patients who come to him and say they’ve been neglecting their medications for months.
While we would strongly caution a consumer against buying prescription drugs from an online pharmacy that was not verified by an experienced credentialing organization, the doctor’s assumption of safety is somewhat warranted. That’s because, unlike Americans risking their health by seeking medications online without a prescription from rouge online pharmacies, his patients have real prescriptions. Prescription requirement is a very strong indication of, but not necessarily a guarantee of, an online pharmacy’s safety. Dr. Becker is apparently aware of this and his greatest concern is where the focus of more healthcare professionals needs to be: drug affordability.
Tagged with: Philadephia Inquirer
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 31, 2013 | Advocacy, Online Pharmacies, Personal Drug Importation, Pharmaceutical Industry, Politics
This article summarizes good things and bad that are happening online with drug prices and savings, economics, legislation, politics, and even ethics that relate to access by Americans to more affordable medication offered by safe international online pharmacies. If you’re a consumer – especially an American consumer facing high drug costs – you should read this. When you’re done (or even right now!) we recommend joining RxRights to help play a role in making medication more affordable for all Americans.
Next year, we’re planning to focus more attention on local Americans pharmacies: what they’re doing right, wrong, and in between, and how you can save and take advantage of their in-store opportunities to improve your health! But for now, the international online pharmacy report…
The Good
The money Americans could save on brand name drugs by shopping at safe international online pharmacies continued to increase in 2013. In 2011 , we reported potential savings of 80%, then a mind-boggling 85% in 2012, and now 87.6% in 2013! Savings have proliferated because America’s trading partners, such as Australia, Canada, the states of the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, generally, have kept brand drug prices stable, whereas in America they increased by an estimated 13% last year.
The pricing data referred to above is from our prescription drug price savings research released this past September. In that report we looked at popular prescription drugs that are not always covered by health insurance plans, including new plans offered as a result of Obamacare. An extreme example of savings is on the drug Abilify 10 mg, a medication prescribed for depression; $9,007.08 could be saved annually by purchasing the drug from the lowest-cost online pharmacy verified by PharmacyChecker.com compared with a retail pharmacy in New York City. A more common example of potential annual savings from international pharmacies is the $3,935.28 savings on Spiriva Handihaler 18 mcg. Drug prices are out of control in the U.S., especially for those with no domestic generic alternative, and access to international online pharmacies is as urgent as ever.
It would, of course, be better if Americans could find more reasonable prices on brand name drugs at their local pharmacies.
(more…)
Tagged with: BeSafeRx, CSIP, FDA, ICANN, international online pharmacy, NABP, RxRights
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 19, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices
Americans with cancer are two times as likely to go bankrupt than other Americans due to the expense of treatment, including astronomical prices for prescription drugs. As reported by ABC News the alternative to bankruptcy is sometimes death.
This blog’s focus is often on international online pharmacies as a lifeline for high drug prices in the U.S. When it comes to cancer medications, online pharmacies are not always a solution since many can only be administered in a clinical setting are not suitable for mail-order pharmacy. However, some cancer meds are suitable for mail order pharmacy, and can be found for much cheaper prices from an international online pharmacy as opposed to a U.S. pharmacy.
Bristol Myers Squibb’s product Sprycel, which treats leukemia, costs $11,000 (60 pills, 50 mg) at a CVS in New York City pharmacy. The same quantity is available from a PharmacyChecker.com approved pharmacy for $5,509, or 50% cheaper. That’s $60,000 savings a year, a discount higher than the median household income in the U.S., and for some the difference between life and death.
Tagged with: Bristol Myers Squibb
