Public Opinion on Drug Prices, Importation and Online Pharmacies
Will drug price angst unite America?
The executive director of Prescription Justice, Jodi Dart, published an op-ed in Morning Consult earlier this week called The Rx Rip-Off. The piece does contain Ms. Dart’s opinions but there are also some facts reported, ones based on a Zogby poll on drug prices commissioned by Prescription Justice. The poll shows that 90% of Americans are united on the need for the government to take action to make medication more affordable! As an incredible coincidence, President Trump tweeted just hours after the op-ed was published that “Pricing for the American people will come way down!”
There’s a lot in this poll that I look forward to writing about but let’s consider some of the broad findings of the poll:
- 75.5% of Americans agree with President Trump that the “drug companies are getting away with murder:
- 29.6% of Americans say they have not filled a prescription because of cost.
- 4.2% say they currently get prescription medication from a Canadian or other international online pharmacy.
- 77% of respondents who had an opinion on the issue of importation laws (522 out of 674) supported reforms so that consumers could lawfully purchase medicines from Canada or other countries.
- Only 15% of respondents were actually against legalizing personal drug importation (23% of those who had an opinion).
Source: Zogby Analytics, margin of error +/- 3.1%: http://prescriptionjustice.org/Prescription_Justice_Zogby_Poll_Data_Feb_2017.pdf.
