PERSONAL IMPORTATION OF BRAND-NAME MEDICINES A KEY ELEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO LOWERING PRESCRIPTION COSTS

A comprehensive approach, including personal importation of medicines, is vital to ending Pharma charging what traffic will bear

Pharma has no inherent authority to either ‘allow’’ or ‘disallow’ Americans from personally importing their medicines
— Daniel Hines

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, USA, February 17, 2016 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The publisher of RxforAmericanHealth says that a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that claims that ‘cheap drugs’ from Canada will not reduce prescription drug prices fails to acknowledge the harm to Americans’ health and well-being, as well as that of society overall, by Pharma charging what “the traffic will bear” based solely upon its profit motives for prescription medicines.

Daniel Hines notes in his blog at RxforAmericanHealth that the conclusion that ‘cheap drugs’ from Canada won’t lower prices simply because no one believes that Pharma will “lean back” and “allow” personal importation simply because they are “selling drugs at a terrific discount to Canada and other countries” does not address the harm done by the long-running opposition by Pharma to personal importation of brand-name medicines, and gives it a ‘license’ to continue its pricing abuses in the name of profit.

“Pharma has no inherent authority to either ‘allow’’ or ‘disallow’ Americans from personally importing their medicines,’ Hines notes, explaining that this is clearly the prerogative of the U.S. Congress.

“That is why over the past 15 years, Congress has passed or considered many bills in support of personal importation of medicines, only to see behind-closed-door deals with PhRMA, the trade group of the Pharmaceutical industry leading to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); ‘poison-pill amendments from legislators, who are recipients of Pharma’s contributions, to require ‘certification’ by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of each and every medicine personally imported; Pharma-led efforts directed at personal importation claiming to protect product safety or intellectual property rights that were turned aside because of public outcry that the legislation would have trampled on individual liberties.”

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