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Helping Americans Get The Truth About Prescription Drug Savings
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Anatomy of a Fake Canadian Online Pharmacy

by | Jul 3, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, FDA, Online Pharmacies

For those of us looking online for safe and affordable medication, it’s very disconcerting to hear about the problem of fake Canadian online pharmacies, or any fake online pharmacy, and the myriad ways they can endanger your health, such as by sending counterfeit or substandard medication or engaging in identity theft.  We can help you avoid the bad guys.

Just last week the FDA reported that – through Operation Pangea VI – thousands of illegal online pharmacies, including fake Canadian ones, were shutdown to protect Americans from dangerous medication.  The FDA should be applauded for shutting down dangerous sites. However, even though there are real Canadian and other international online pharmacies that are safe and have very low drug prices, the FDA continues to warn Americans not to use them through its BeSafeRx program. We believe this confuses Americans about what they need to do to obtain prescribed and affordable medication safely online.

A fake Canadian online pharmacy is essentially a website dressed up with the Canadian flag, maple leafs, with red and white colors, or other graphics of Canada, but without actual ties to Canada. In fact, a majority of so called “Canadian” online pharmacies are based overseas, many in Russia and Eastern Europe. Some of them are even known to have ties to organized crime. Simply put, they are not Canadian pharmacies. Like all rogue online pharmacies, fake Canadian online pharmacies often:

  1. Don’t require prescriptions;
  2. Don’t publish verifiable and useful contact information;
  3. Don’t fill orders through licensed pharmacies;
  4. Don’t sell real or safe medications;
  5. Don’t have licensed pharmacist dispensing your prescription order; and
  6. Don’t protect your personal and financial information.

A real Canadian online pharmacy offers the following:

  1. Regulated medications that are approved by a respected national drug regulatory authority;
  2. Prescription fulfillment through licensed pharmacies, dispensed by licensed pharmacists;
  3. Requirement of your valid prescription, issued by your doctor – NOT through an online questionnaire;
  4. Verifiable contact information, including telephone number and mailing address;
  5. Online pharmacy operation by or affiliated with a licensed Canadian pharmacy; and
  6. The ability for consumers to speak with a licensed pharmacist for counseling;.

You can find real Canadian online pharmacies on PharmacyChecker.com. We have verified that they meet critical safety criteria.

There are a small number of real Canadian online pharmacies that no longer work with a Canadian bricks and mortar pharmacy because they have transferred prescription fulfillment to licensed pharmacies in other countries. They retain the Canadian moniker or have the word “Canada” in their web addresses to keep their original branding and website.  That doesn’t mean they are not safe. However, they ought to be transparent and disclose that medications ordered come from pharmacies outside of Canada.

This brings up an important side note: where are your medications really coming from and who is making them? When you buy a prescription medication at your local U.S. pharmacy that does not mean it was made in the United States. Almost half of all prescription drugs sold in U.S. pharmacies are imported.  Furthermore, U.S. pharmacies do not inform you who made the active ingredients (the main ingredient that treats you) – in the medication you are taking. Most active pharmaceutical ingredients – 80% according to the FDA – found in U.S. pharmacy prescription drugs are made outside the U.S., mostly in India and China. If you buy a prescription drug from Canada and most other countries the same holds true. Don’t despair, the U.S. and many other countries have strong safety protocols to protect their prescription drug supplies: those same supplies usually just cost much more in the United States.

Here’s a chart to show you the difference between real and fake Canadian online pharmacies. As you’ll see it’s like day and night:

Real Canadian Online Pharmacies Fake Canadian Online Pharmacies
Sells only regulated medication? YES NO
Prescription fulfilled through licensed pharmacies and by licensed pharmacists? YES NO
Requires your valid prescription? YES NO
Provides verifiable contact information? YES NO
Protects your privacy? YES NO
Does not send you spam? YES NO
Is owned by or works with a Canadian pharmacy? YES NO
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Maine Poised to Facilitate Safe Personal Drug Importation

by | Jun 21, 2013 | Advocacy, Healthcare Reform, Politics

Maine residents may soon have easier access to lower cost prescription drugs from international online pharmacies, if Governor Paul LePage signs a bill recently passed by the Maine Legislature. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support – 107 yeas to 37 nays and seven abstentions in the House, and 30 yeas to four nays, with one excused in the Senate.  The new law would make it expressly legal, not just “permitted,” to import medication for personal use. The bill was written partly as a response to the Maine Attorney General shutting down importation programs last September that were clearly safe and helping cut prescription costs. The bill’s passage would allow those programs to operate.

PharmacyChecker.com vice president Gabriel Levitt weighed in on Maine Public Broadcasting Network yesterday, defending consumers by explaining that millions of Americans who can’t afford medication are wrongly dissuaded from ordering it online: “The problem is certain groups, often funded by the pharmaceutical industry, are telling Americans that there’s no way to get medications safely online, and it is just not true.”

Listen to the broadcast and read the accompanying article here.

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High Drug Prices Disproportionately Causing African-Americans to Cut Back on Medication

by | Jun 11, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Medication non-adherence

The latest edition of NPR’s ongoing series, The View From Black America, focuses on Americans who live within fear of financial disaster due to high drug costs. In fact, one in four African-Americans struggle to afford medication, according to a national poll conducted by NPR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Mike Jackson is one of the millions of Americans whose response to high drug prices was to scale back his medication (in his case, insulin). Mr. Jackson stated, “Instead of taking 60 units twice a day, I was taking 30 units twice a day….The idea behind that was if I watched what I would eat and then stay with the 30 units — I would keep my blood sugar down enough that hopefully it would not be much of a problem.” His medication cost almost $500 per month.

Mr. Jackson ended up with numbness in his foot and toes, and nerve damage in his eyes, sure signs that his diabetes had gone out of control. A trip to the ophthalmologist only added to his medical bills.

Ashley Liggins had to choose whether to purchase food, gas, or medication to control her blood pressure. When the choice comes between medicine and other essentials, like food for your family, sometimes expensive medicine may be the first to go. And this this was the decision made by Ms. Liggins, leading her to reduce doses and borrow pills from her mother.

We will continue to document cases of Americans getting sicker due to high drug prices. To take action on bringing down drug prices consider joining RxRights.org.

To listen to the NPR segment, click here.

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Americans Are Unique In Their Need for Personally Imported Medication from Online Pharmacies

by | Jun 7, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Importation, Personal Drug Importation

Among citizens of high-income countries, Americans are exceptional in their struggle to afford medication. Citizens of Japan, for example, do not have to skip medication because of its price, or at least such instances are exceedingly rare. Compare that to 50 million Americans going without a prescription each year due to cost. It’s an obvious reason why so many Americans, relative to non-Americans, are searching online for prescription medication from other countries. Fortunately, they can compare drug prices among safe online pharmacies and avoid rogue sites.

For chronic conditions – even medically expensive ones like cancer and AIDS –  citizens of high income countries, except America, almost never need to access an international online pharmacy because the medication at their local pharmacy is affordable.  An excellent documentary on PBS shows just how affordable medical and pharmaceutical care is in Japan. This is not to endorse another countries’ healthcare system but to clearly identify and remind our readers that high drug prices as a barrier to care is a unique American crisis among rich countries.

When consumers outside America go online to buy medication, it’s usually to purchase lifestyle drugs, such as medication for erectile dysfunction or hair loss. Due to the nature of these products, some consumers would prefer anonymity by skipping the doctor’s visit to get a prescription and instead purchase them from rogue online pharmacies without a prescription. Rogue online pharmacies are more likely to sell counterfeit and substandard products, and making all consumers aware of this protects  their health. Since cost is a barrier to medication for so many Americans, making them aware of lower cost alternatives internationally is good for their health, too.

How big are the overall price differences between countries? A chart from 2005 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), showing international drug price disparities, is very revealing. It shows that the U.S. spends about twice as much per person than the average for OECD countries.  Since international drug price disparities have grown considerably since 2005 on brand name drugs, the disparity between American drug prices and international has grown more severe.

Drug prices are lower internationally primarily because foreign governments control pharmaceutical prices through a variety of policy interventions. For most prescription medications, particularly for maintenance conditions, this mitigates the need to seek out lower prices online internationally. In America the need persists more so than ever.

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Opposition Grows to Pharma-Funded Application by NABP for .Pharmacy to ICANN

by | May 30, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacies

More public interest and consumer groups are hopping on the bandwagon to defend online access to safe and affordable medication. As we reported a few weeks back, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has applied to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to administer a generic top level domain called “.Pharmacy” (dot pharmacy). NABP proposes to block all online pharmacies that fill orders internationally to Americans from obtaining a website that ends in .Pharmacy, including ones that are safe and approved by PharmacyChecker.com.  NABP’s critics, identified below, view its application as an effort to curtail consumer purchases of lower cost medicine from outside the United States. One of their main concerns is  that  NABP’s application is funded by Merck and Eli Lilly – big pharma: a situation prone to major conflicts of interest.

To read more about this issue see our press release.

This NABP/ICANN issue can be very confusing so I offer the following explanation.  ICANN is a non-profit organization that governs the world wide web system of domain names, such as .com, .org., and .edu. For a long time the available suffixes, called generic top-level domains (gTLDs)  that could be used for website names have been limited. Last year ICANN opened up a process by which companies and organizations could apply to act as registry – administrators – for new names, such as .career, .casino, .charity, etc.  In theory, this could open up new opportunities for innovation and development over the Internet. However, a pharma-funded initiative to make the rules and govern the Internet in an area as critical as the distribution of prescription medication will serve only to protect business interests to the detriment of consumers.

David Moon from Demand Progress, an Internet freedom group and lead organization in battling the Stop Online Piracy Act, sums it up perfectly: “From our direct experience with NABP and its allies in Internet policy disputes, there is ample cause to believe the applicant seeks to control .pharmacy to the detriment of free speech & access to safe and affordable medication for consumers.”

Here is a list of the groups and people who have voiced opposition and concern about NABP’s application for .Pharmacy:

Canadian International Pharmacy Association (Tim Smith, President)

Demand Progress (David Moon, Program Director)

Knowledge Ecology International – KEI (James Love, Director)

Mature Voices Minnesota (Robert E. Hines, Board Chair)

PharmacyChecker.com (Tod Cooperman,  MD, President and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President)

Public Citizen (Peter Maybarduk, JD, Global Access to Medicines Program Director)

Ram Kamath, PharmD (PharmacyChecker.com, Director of Pharmacy Policy and International Verifications).

RxRights.org (Lee Graczyk, Lead Organizer)

TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com (Daniel Hines)

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Doctors Advocate for Lower Drug Prices to Save Lives

by | May 24, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Pharmaceutical Industry

A group of over 100 doctors recently banded together to declare that “lower drug prices [are] a necessity to save the lives of patients who cannot afford them,” as written in their article in Blood, the medical journal published by the American Society of Hematology. We couldn’t agree with them more.

The doctors, experts in chronic myeloid leukemia, focused particularly on the drug Gleevec (imatinib), which costs around $100,000 annually per patient in the United States. Gleevec costs around $35,000 internationally.

There is nothing politically or economically radical about their position. In fact, they acknowledge the societal and political pressures that affect drug pricing, as well as the necessity of profits by drug companies to fund future research. They simply seek fair pricing.

Unfortunately, cancer medication prices are dramatically increasing and are not “fair.” To quote the Blood article: “imatinib may have set the pace for the rising cost of cancer drugs. Initially priced at nearly $30,000 per year when it was released in 2001, its price has now increased to $92,000 in 2012 (1), despite the fact that all research costs were accounted for in the original proposed price….”

Such protests can work; last year doctors at Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital pressured Sanofi into effectively halving Zaltrap’s initial market price of $11,000 by offering discounts. We hope that these precedents mobilize more doctors to hop on the bandwagon to further publicize that high drug prices in the U.S. are a serious threat to the public health.

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