Amazon’s Pharmacy Should Support Importation to Offer Lower Drug Prices
Originally published on LinkedIn.
With drug prices in the spotlight of our national healthcare debate, one could certainly view Amazon’s entry last year into the pharmacy space as a welcome development. After all, when it comes to upending traditional business models by undercutting their prices, Amazon is king. For Americans, the tens of millions who don’t fill prescriptions each year because of cost, relief can’t come soon enough. For Amazon to succeed, Jeff Bezos should consider teaming up with Senator Bernie Sanders. Amazon’s support for The Affordable and Safe Prescription Drug Importation Act, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)—to allow for the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs—would be the game changer that would have American patients cheering and the pharmaceutical industry crying.
Recent bi-partisan efforts to bring lower-cost generic drugs to market faster are a great step in the right direction, but they don’t infuse our captive pharmaceutical marketplace with competition to lower prices on patented – brand name – prescription drugs. Importation would fuel that competition. An unlikely alliance between our country’s most successful capitalist and trailblazing, Democratic Socialist is what we need!
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