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…)
Some pharmaceutical industry folks, and their political allies, like to make the point that our nation’s seniors no longer need access to lower-cost foreign medication because they now have new and improved Medicare drug plans. But a new report by IMS indicates that drug costs are having a negative effect on public health, including for our seniors’. Put simply, the data indicates that even with the improvements and savings offered by Part D of Medicare (Medicare’s drug benefit), seniors still struggle to afford the drugs they need.
According to the report, medicine use by 65-year-olds decreased 3.1% — the largest decrease in any age group. As reported in the New York Times, Michael Kleinrock, director of research development at the IMS Institute for Health Informatics, a group that consults for the drug industry, said that seniors appear to be “rationing their care as they struggled to pay rising bills on fixed incomes.” Mr. Kleinrock also said, “We’re reaching a tipping point where patients will actually take that increased cost and use less medicine.” Leigh Purvis, who studies drug prices for the AARP explains that the drugs most often cut are those “where you don’t necessarily develop symptoms when you stop taking them.”
Source: IMS Health, LifeLink, Dec 2011; U.S. Census Bureau
Such cutbacks in drug utilization for needed medication are known to lead to increased emergency room visits and greater social costs. Indeed, according to the IMS data, emergency room visits are up by 7.4%. Other studies, such as one by the Commonwealth Fund, have shown that medication nonadherence (skipping your prescribed medication) has been linked to increased emergency room visits, hospital stays, and nursing home admissions. The new IMS report illustrates this correlation as it finds seniors cutting back on needed medication.
Some improvements to Part D of Medicare have already been implemented and the IMS data shows a $1.8 billion decrease in out-of-pocket spending on prescription medication that is likely due to these improvements. More improvements are on the way as long as the Affordable Care Act is not overturned. However, it’s clear that our seniors continue to suffer negative health consequences because of drug affordability problems.
A recent survey by RxRights.org, a non-profit group advocating for Americans who purchase medication from Canada and other countries, shows that just over half of people who personally import medication through online pharmacies are in Medicare. So even with Part D available to them, they actively seek lower drug prices outside the United States, making it abundantly clear that seniors continue to need the option to personally import prescription medication. It is important that they do so safely, using pharmacies approved by third-party verification programs such as PharmacyChecker.com.
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.
There is a drug affordability crisis in America. As we’ve reported, in 2010 48 million adults did not fill a prescription due to high drug costs. Perhaps surprisingly, in addition to millions of uninsured Americans, many Americans with insurance forgo prescription medication due to cost. Such insured Americans, unable to cover necessary medical costs, including medication, are often referred to as the underinsured. A previous study from 2004 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reveals that 82.1% of those who restricted medication to due costs were actually insured. The picture is clear; underinsurance is a major issue in the battle to afford prescribed medication.
The Affordable Healthcare For America Act will help millions of Americans, including with their drug bills – but it is not a cure-all. It is uncertain how the new regulations will affect drug pricing. With drug price negotiations and cost reducing drug importation measures excluded from the healthcare act, and with millions of insured Americans currently struggling to pay high drug costs, what is to say newly insured people will not struggle to afford or go without prescribed medications?
Throughout the year PharmacyCheckerBlog will be following the research and predictions about drug affordability under the new law. Stay tuned…
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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.
