by Lucia Mueller, President, PharmacyChecker.com | May 11, 2018 | Drug Importation
Today, President Trump will be talking about drug prices and his administration’s plan to help Americans better afford prescription drugs. By permitting importation of affordable medication, the administration has a chance to really strike a populist chord and a positive one.
It’s been said that the president is going to talk about trying to force other countries, such as Canada, to raise drug prices. Instead, why not expressly allow Americans to access those lower prices through importation? It was one of the solutions offered by Trump during his campaign.
The millions of Americans, across all parties, who already import medication to fill prescriptions will wildly applaud the administration for doing so.
Can Trump use executive authority on drug prices? Yes. Under current law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, can permit individuals to import medication for personal use right now. The Secretary can also make it lawful for companies to import FDA-approved drugs at wholesale pharmacies in Canada.
America is united against high drug prices. It seems we’re only waiting for POTUS to catch up.
Tagged with: Alex Azar, executive authority, trump
by Lucia Mueller, President, PharmacyChecker.com | Feb 1, 2018 | Drug Prices
There are not many issues you can hear both Republicans and Democrats clapping about in unison, but high drug prices is definitely one of them. Echoing his 2016 campaign, President Trump again proclaimed during his State of the Union address Tuesday night that his administration is determined “to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of our top priorities.”
Speeding up the approval of lower-cost generics was noted by Trump as “exciting progress,” but nothing substantial has been done by the Trump administration on drug prices. The appointment of Alex Azar to head the Department of Health and Human Services department was a major disappointment. As president of Eli Lilly USA, Azar oversaw major price hikes on lifeline medications, such as insulin.
Appealing to both his base and popular opinion, President Trump could use his executive authority immediately to more expressly permit Americans to buy medication from international pharmacies.
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Tagged with: Alex Azar, Eli Lilly, executive authority, State of The Union, trump
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Oct 17, 2017 | Drug Prices
Yesterday, for a second time, President Trump said drug companies are getting away with murder. This time Trump talked about how much lower drug prices are in other countries:
“If you look at the same exact drug, by the same exact company…sold someplace else, sometimes it’s a fraction of what we pay in this country…We want to bring our prices down to what other countries are paying. I don’t mean [Americans] are paying 2% more. I mean they are paying double, triple, quadruple…”
Using executive authority under current law to expand access to lower-cost imported medications, President Trump could do something about it immediately. The guy is no stranger to executive authority! Currently, he’s using executive authority to put Obamacare out of business, measures which, in case you were wondering, I strongly oppose. Those moves will make people lose their health insurance and are opposed by over half my fellow Americans.
In contrast, if President Trump used his executive authority on drug prices, he would get an overwhelming chorus of support from the Left, Middle, Right and every which way around.
So how does this go down?
Under current law, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an executive branch agency, can “by regulation or on a case-by-case basis…permit individuals” to import medication if “the importation is clearly for personal use…and the prescription drug or device imported does not appear to present an unreasonable risk to the individual.”
What are you waiting for, boss? See the report by Prescription Justice on using executive authority to allow safe personal drug importation from international online pharmacies.
Tagged with: drug industry, Drug Prices, executive authority, executive order, trump
