by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Dec 31, 2013 | Advocacy, Online Pharmacies, Personal Drug Importation, Pharmaceutical Industry, Politics
This article summarizes good things and bad that are happening online with drug prices and savings, economics, legislation, politics, and even ethics that relate to access by Americans to more affordable medication offered by safe international online pharmacies. If you’re a consumer – especially an American consumer facing high drug costs – you should read this. When you’re done (or even right now!) we recommend joining RxRights to help play a role in making medication more affordable for all Americans.
Next year, we’re planning to focus more attention on local Americans pharmacies: what they’re doing right, wrong, and in between, and how you can save and take advantage of their in-store opportunities to improve your health! But for now, the international online pharmacy report…
The Good
The money Americans could save on brand name drugs by shopping at safe international online pharmacies continued to increase in 2013. In 2011 , we reported potential savings of 80%, then a mind-boggling 85% in 2012, and now 87.6% in 2013! Savings have proliferated because America’s trading partners, such as Australia, Canada, the states of the European Union, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, generally, have kept brand drug prices stable, whereas in America they increased by an estimated 13% last year.
The pricing data referred to above is from our prescription drug price savings research released this past September. In that report we looked at popular prescription drugs that are not always covered by health insurance plans, including new plans offered as a result of Obamacare. An extreme example of savings is on the drug Abilify 10 mg, a medication prescribed for depression; $9,007.08 could be saved annually by purchasing the drug from the lowest-cost online pharmacy verified by PharmacyChecker.com compared with a retail pharmacy in New York City. A more common example of potential annual savings from international pharmacies is the $3,935.28 savings on Spiriva Handihaler 18 mcg. Drug prices are out of control in the U.S., especially for those with no domestic generic alternative, and access to international online pharmacies is as urgent as ever.
It would, of course, be better if Americans could find more reasonable prices on brand name drugs at their local pharmacies.
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Tagged with: BeSafeRx, CSIP, FDA, ICANN, international online pharmacy, NABP, RxRights
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | May 30, 2013 | Advocacy, Drug Prices, Online Pharmacies
More public interest and consumer groups are hopping on the bandwagon to defend online access to safe and affordable medication. As we reported a few weeks back, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has applied to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to administer a generic top level domain called “.Pharmacy” (dot pharmacy). NABP proposes to block all online pharmacies that fill orders internationally to Americans from obtaining a website that ends in .Pharmacy, including ones that are safe and approved by PharmacyChecker.com. NABP’s critics, identified below, view its application as an effort to curtail consumer purchases of lower cost medicine from outside the United States. One of their main concerns is that NABP’s application is funded by Merck and Eli Lilly – big pharma: a situation prone to major conflicts of interest.
To read more about this issue see our press release.
This NABP/ICANN issue can be very confusing so I offer the following explanation. ICANN is a non-profit organization that governs the world wide web system of domain names, such as .com, .org., and .edu. For a long time the available suffixes, called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that could be used for website names have been limited. Last year ICANN opened up a process by which companies and organizations could apply to act as registry – administrators – for new names, such as .career, .casino, .charity, etc. In theory, this could open up new opportunities for innovation and development over the Internet. However, a pharma-funded initiative to make the rules and govern the Internet in an area as critical as the distribution of prescription medication will serve only to protect business interests to the detriment of consumers.
David Moon from Demand Progress, an Internet freedom group and lead organization in battling the Stop Online Piracy Act, sums it up perfectly: “From our direct experience with NABP and its allies in Internet policy disputes, there is ample cause to believe the applicant seeks to control .pharmacy to the detriment of free speech & access to safe and affordable medication for consumers.”
Here is a list of the groups and people who have voiced opposition and concern about NABP’s application for .Pharmacy:
Canadian International Pharmacy Association (Tim Smith, President)
Demand Progress (David Moon, Program Director)
Knowledge Ecology International – KEI (James Love, Director)
Mature Voices Minnesota (Robert E. Hines, Board Chair)
PharmacyChecker.com (Tod Cooperman, MD, President and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President)
Public Citizen (Peter Maybarduk, JD, Global Access to Medicines Program Director)
Ram Kamath, PharmD (PharmacyChecker.com, Director of Pharmacy Policy and International Verifications).
RxRights.org (Lee Graczyk, Lead Organizer)
TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com (Daniel Hines)
Tagged with: Demand Progress, ICANN, NABP, pharmacy, RxRights
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Mar 29, 2013 | Advocacy, Personal Drug Importation, Pharmaceutical Industry
The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has applied to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to operate the registry .Pharmacy (dot pharmacy). Opposition to the application is picking up steam. Many believe that NABP’s efforts will merely serve to protect U.S. pharmacy and pharmaceutical interests at the expense of the public health by barring competition from safe non-U.S., international online pharmacies, which sell the same prescription drugs sold in the U.S. at a much lower price. Not only is the NABP application to ICANN is funded by pharmaceutical companies, but NABP’s named “Partners” in the ICANN application include Eli Lilly, a large drug company and the National Association of Chain Drugstores, a trade association representing the largest American pharmacy chains.
Opposition to NABP’s application to ICANN for .Pharmacy Registry
Public Citizen Position on NABPs Application to ICANN for .Pharmacy
RxRights.org Position on NABPs Application to ICANN for.Pharmacy
PharmacyChecker.com Position on NABPs Application to ICANN for .Pharmacy
If given the power to oversee the registry for the .Pharmacy top-level domain, the NABP would decide which websites are permitted to use the .Pharmacy ending in their web address. It appears that the NABP’s proposed registry rules would prohibit registry to websites of safe international online pharmacies (such as websites run by licensed Canadian pharmacies) if they sell internationally to Americans. The lack of a “.Pharmacy” address by such pharmacies could frighten Americans away from using them. Considering that tens of millions of Americans don’t take medication due to high U.S. drug prices, discouraging or blocking access to affordable medication is unconscionable.
As recognized in a letter sent from RxRights.org to NABP, it does not have to be this way. The goal of providing a trusted marketplace for consumers who are searching online for safe and affordable medication can be served with a .Pharmacy website program. However, to provide the greatest benefit to consumers, ALL online pharmacies, U.S., Canadian, or otherwise, that sell authentic medication and require prescriptions should be eligible to obtain a .Pharmacy site, regardless of who they sell to. Unless the NABP agrees to adopt registry rules fostering an open and free Internet, one that maximizes access to safe and affordable medication, its application should be rejected by ICANN.
Tagged with: Eli Lilly, ICANN, NABP, pharmacy, RxRights
