by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jul 2, 2019 | Internet Censorship
One of the Sustainable Development Goals, 3.8, created under UN auspices is: “Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.” Lower-income countries where majorities of citizens can’t afford basic healthcare are deserving of our urgent and generous help, but the pain and anguish faced by American families where people are dying because they can’t afford medicine must also be addressed.
Online access
to safe and affordable imported medicine can improve and even saves lives
of those who can’t afford medicine where they live. This is particularly the
case in the United States, where over 30 million people have no health
insurance at all, and approximately 87 million are not adequately insured [Commonwealth
Fund, 2019].
Organized under the support of the World Health Organization
(WHO), as part of the effort to achieve global healthcare goals, twelve
multilateral global health and development organizations are seeking public
comments to help them develop their “Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives
and Well-being for All.” My comment is below.
(more…)Tagged with: politics, public comments, SDG
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Jun 27, 2019 | Drug Importation
Trump supports prescription drug importation, and he’s not alone. An article by Kaiser Health News reporter Phil Galewitz headlined Trump’s support for drug importation to fight high drug prices at the state level. His article delves into the history of earlier state importation attempts, which were personal drug importation not wholesale drug importation programs. But the coolest thing I took from it was that the three states that passed prescription drug importation laws have governors across the political spectrum. None are traditional right-wing Republicans or super left Democrats. What does that look like?
In Florida, you have Governor Ron DeSantis, fashioning
himself in the mold of a Trumpist Republican.
In Vermont, you have Governor Phil Scott, who can best be
described with a phrase practically unheard of these days: Liberal
Republican.
Finally, newly elected Governor Jared Polis from Colorado is
a moderate Democrat.
While the state importation bill failed to advance in Utah, its vociferous champion in the state assembly is a very conservative Republican, Norm Thurston (Provo).
(more…)Tagged with: politics, states, trump
by Gabriel Levitt, President, PharmacyChecker.com and Prescription Justice | Feb 15, 2019 | Drug Importation
In my blog post about the Senate
Finance Committee hearing on drug prices, I noted my surprise at
Senator Mike Enzi’s (R-WY) comment that he knew about a foundation that helps
people import lower-cost insulin from Canada. Sen. Enzi stated that a person
referred to as his diabetes advisor had
“found a way to work through a foundation to import insulin for a number of
people at lower-cost. And I think he worked for a foundation so that it would
be legal.” I had endeavored to look into it, but fortunately Jay Hancock from
Kaiser Health News beat me to it and found, sadly, no
such insulin import program exists. I think we can all agree that it
should!
In researching the story, Jay asked me if I knew of such a
program.
Nope.
(more…)Tagged with: Insulin, politics, Senator Mike Enzi
