House Ways and Means Report Recommends Looking Abroad for Lower Drug Prices… Kind of…
A report (“A Painful Pill to Swallow: U.S. vs. International Prescription Drug Prices”) was released this week by the Congressional House Ways and Means Committee, showing that brand name drug prices are much lower – by about 75% on average – in other high-income countries. Who knew? Well, our analysis from this past summer showed that the average savings on popular brand drugs filled through online orders with Canadian pharmacies was 75%. When including pharmacies in other countries, the savings jumped to 90%. Those include pharmacies located in middle income countries, such as Turkey. For the record, these are comparisons among PharmacyChecker-accredited online pharmacies.
The committee’s report looked at prices of 79 brand name drugs in the following countries: Australia, Canada (specifically Ontario), Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. I highly recommend reading this report if you want to learn about international drug price differentials and better understand how Americans are getting ripped off.
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