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.
Today we issued a press release showing that the most popular brand name asthma medications are on average 76% less when purchasing from the lowest-cost PharmacyChecker.com-verified online pharmacies than at U.S. bricks and mortar pharmacies. For example, a three month supply of Advair Diskus (250-50mcg/dose), a popular preventative medication, costs $947.97 at a bricks-and-mortar pharmacy in New York City. The same medicine, by the same manufacturer, costs $149.00, at a verified international online pharmacy – a savings of 84%. With such high prices domestically it’s no surprise Americans with asthma often find themselves going without needed treatments and ending up in emergency rooms.
A 2005 study sponsored by Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard School of Public Health, and USA Today found that 44% of American households with an asthma sufferer are unable to follow prescribed treatments due to cost. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.7 million Americans went to emergency rooms in 2009 due to their asthma conditions. The CDC attributed such hospitalizations to low adherence to asthma management strategies, which include taking preventative asthma medication. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month reported that out-of-pocket costs for medicine were a factor in greater hospitalization rates among children with asthma in the U.S
The health benefits of products such as Advair Diskus, Flovent, and Singulair – preventative asthma medications –are sometimes difficult for patients to ascertain when they are not showing asthma symptoms. Unfortunately, because prices for these products are so high in the United States, Americans view skipping these medications as a way to save money and others simply can’t afford them. If more Americans could find these products at more reasonable prices, such as from verified international online pharmacies, then adherence would improve, leading to less ER visits, better overall health outcomes, and lower healthcare costs for all of us. And with more affordable asthma medication, trips to the grocery store will be less daunting.
For more on asthma medication prices, see the press release.
As reported in DigitalJournal this past Wednesday, at a press conference in Keene, NH, Congressman Ron Paul (TX-14), Republican candidate for president, accused the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA of being in “bed together.” He derided their arrangement, characterized by a revolving door of people repeatedly switching jobs back and forth between the FDA and pharmaceutical industry, as collusion to reduce competition in the pharmaceutical marketplace, resulting in higher drug prices. When it comes to online pharmacies, personal drug importation and drug prices, Congressman Paul’s critique resonates all too loudly.
The pharmaceutical industry, through their main trade association Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has lobbied vigorously to keep safe personal drug importation illegal, and to scare Americans away through its media relations juggernaut and funding of the Partnership for Safe Medicine from buying safe and affordable medication online from Canada and other countries. PhRMA even commissioned the publication of a novel about a terrorist conspiracy – The Karasik Conspiracy – in which terrorists attack Americans with bad drugs sold from Canada! This effort backfired and they pulled the plug on the publishing company, which then went ahead and published a different version of The Karasik Conspiracy novel in which a pharmaceutical giant poisons medications to protect its profits. (more…)
A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that pharmacies approved in the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program sell safe medication and can help Americans achieve substantial savings. By filling 370 prescriptions through 41 online pharmacies and testing the authenticity of the medications received, independent researchers from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. found no test failures among online pharmacies verified by third-party verifiers, such as PharmacyChecker.com.
Since all online pharmacies approved by PharmacyChecker.com – whether American or foreign – are licensed, require a prescription, and meet high standards of online pharmacy safety, the results of this study are not the least bit surprising. Past studies have shown the exact same results. Still, the FDA ignores the facts and continues a consumer education policy recommending that Americans completely avoid non-US online pharmacies. We believe the FDA’s policy is unethical and unfair. More importantly, its policy is bad for the public health because less access to affordable prescription drugs means fewer Americans will procure needed medications.
Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), chaired a panel at the African American Museum in Philadelphia last week to discuss problems of access to affordable healthcare, which included the problem of drug costs in America. It’s noteworthy that Secretary Sebelius conspicuously did not mention that as governor of Kansas she adopted a drug importation program through which residents of Kansas had online access to verified and low-cost international pharmacies.
During the panel discussions, a retired pastor, Delores McCabe, brought focus to the high cost of prescription medication. As reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
There has got to be something we can do above the Affordable Care Act that does something about an industry that is immoral,” [McCabe] said, drawing applause from the crowd. “It is immoral and unethical to charge people to stay alive.
In her response, Sebelius urged McCabe and the others to voice their opinions to their elected officials. She mentioned that strides have been taken to bring down costs during her time with the Obama administration, such as plugging the Medicare drug plan doughnut hold with 50% discounts and the passage of the Affordable Care Act through which more Americans will have healthcare insurance (and therefore lower drug costs). She also mentioned that as Governor of Kansas she was able to negotiate drug prices for Medicaid but that such negotiations for Medicare are illegal under federal law.
We wonder, however, why she omitted the fact that as governor she authorized the creation of a state website so Kansas residents could access verified international pharmacies offering safe and affordable prescription drugs from Canada and other countries. Apparently, what was once politically popular, helping Americans personally import safe and affordable prescription medication, appears less so. Unfortunately, its lack of political popularity has probably resulted in fewer Americans getting the medication they need. Hopefully this election season will shine a bright light on the plight of Americans and their inability to afford medication in the United States and all the effective solutions to the problem, politically popular or not.
Our blog was created on behalf of the American consumer, to inform Americans, and the larger community interested in public health, about issues relating to personal drug importation, online pharmacies and drug prices. The three issues are inextricably linked; Americans are able to personally import prescription drugs from safe online pharmacies at affordable drug prices. This has helped millions of Americans, most without health insurance and, or, pharmacy benefits, afford needed medication. In fact, many Americans personally import safe medication that they would otherwise go without if their only options were U.S. pharmacies. Stopping them from doing so would be unacceptable, unethical, and a threat to the public health, and yet we find that is precisely the outcome for 2012 sought by the pharmaceutical and U.S. pharmacy industries.
Under U.S. law it is, in most circumstances, illegal to personally import prescription medication. For over a decade now, Americans have nonetheless taken matters into their own hands by acquiring the non-controlled medication they need outside the United States; and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has, for the most part, not stopped them. Throughout this period, the pharmaceutical industry has vigorously lobbied against personal drug importation to combat the price competition it brings, which means greater drug affordability for Americans but lower profits for pharmaceutical companies and sometimes U.S. pharmacies.
And their efforts have flourished. Over the past couple of years we have closely followed political, legislative and pharmaceutical industry initiatives to overhaul the status quo by bringing an end to online access to affordable medication. At the crux of these anti-consumer efforts is their communications strategy of deceptively attempting to link safe international online pharmacies, which require a valid prescription, with rogue online pharmacies that sell dangerous medication and don’t require a prescription, as if they operate a single black market in deadly counterfeit drugs that needs shutting down. Through these efforts, they have scared Americans away from safe and affordable medication, but their final goal is actually stopping the trade all together.
While there are safe online pharmacies, domestic and foreign, there is a real danger of counterfeit and deadly drugs sold throughout the world, including the United States’ own supply, and through rogue online pharmacies, so let’s attack the true dangers! However, it is neither morally defensible nor necessary to prevent Americans from online access to safe international online pharmacies that sell genuine and affordable medication, often at an 80% discount.
How loudly must we remind our leaders of the government’s own dire statistics? Twenty-five million Americans couldn’t afford to fill their prescription in 2009 (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Even worse, the Commonwealth Fund’s findings show that 48 million Americans did not fill a prescription in 2010 due to cost, a 66% increase in non-adherence since 2001 (see RxSOS). When people don’t take their medicine they can get sick and even die – and the reality is that too often they do.
Safe international online pharmacies may not be the long term solution to the emergency gripping the country in which so many go without needed medication due to cost, but for now such sites provide a lifeline for approximately one million Americans each year. Cutting that lifeline poses a danger to the public health and is just plain wrong.
In 2012 we hope our elected officials and policy-makers will have the courage to stop federal and legislative actions, mostly pushed by the pharmaceutical industry that would block online access to safe and affordable medication. Such leaders are desperately needed now by the tens of millions of Americans who can’t afford prescription drugs in the United States.
To help protect online access to safe and affordable medication we encourage Americans to join and work with RxRights.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to this cause.
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A source for news and analysis about drug prices and safety, online pharmacies and personal drug importation, published on behalf of American consumers.
