Americans overwhelmingly believe that drug prices are unreasonably high in our country. Millions have looked to the Internet to find lower drug prices at pharmacies in other countries, many because they have no other choice. For over 16 years, PharmacyChecker has provided online pharmacy verification and drug price comparison information to help these people. As I’ve written about for years, the drug companies and U.S. pharmacy corporations don’t like this and take actions to make it stop.
PharmacyChecker has filed a lawsuit against organizations and companies that we allege are illegally conspiring to “to choke off information about personal importation of affordable prescription medications from regulated, reputable pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere overseas.”
Rochester Drug Cooperative, a large pharmacy wholesaler
accredited by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), pleaded
guilty last week to illegal sales of opioid drugs, including oxycodone and
fentanyl. The NABP operates a program called Verified Authorized Wholesale
Distribution (VAWD). According to its website, NABP VAWD accreditation helps
“ensure that the wholesale distribution facility operates legitimately, is
licensed in good standing, and is employing security and best practices for
safely distributing prescription drugs from manufacturers to pharmacies and
other institutions.”
The nation’s largest pharmacy wholesalers, McKesson,
Amerisource Bergen, and Cardinal Health – companies with many NABP-accredited
facilities – have all paid fines related to civil or criminal charges of
illegal opioid drug sales, including fentanyl. Along with large
drug companies, like Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and Insys
Therapeutics, the main arteries of American’s “legitimate” drug distribution
supply chain are accused
of causing the opioid epidemic with 218,000 opioid-related deaths over the
last 20 years.
Until we lower drug prices here at home in America, online access
to affordable medication internationally is clearly essential. But what if we
lived in a country where people were no longer able to find safe international
options online?
In an ideal world, search algorithms empower consumers to
find the exact information they are looking for on these search engines. In a
recent Google algorithm update (March 2019), which affected the “natural” or
“organic,” non-paid search results, we wonder if there was foul play involved
in which Google was caving in
to Big Pharma. The Electronic Frontier Foundation identified this problem
in 2016, in “How
Big Pharma’s Shadow Regulation Censors the Internet.”
The results at the very top of your Google search are often ads, which are of course paid placement: a different problem.
Those patients searching on Google for information about affording medicine through online pharmacies were significantly disadvantaged by the Google March 2019 Core Update. The reason is that results for PharmacyChecker ‘s verification and pricing information are now much harder to find than they were on March 11th, 2019— a day before the update.
Welcome to PharmacyChecker Blog, brought to you by PharmacyChecker.com:
A source for news and analysis about drug prices and safety, online pharmacies and personal drug importation, published on behalf of American consumers.
