Is a good solution to our health care problem in America allowing people to get precriptions overseas?
Question:
Should we instead allow Americans to go to Canada or Mexico to buy precription drug medication and then bring it back to their homes in America?
Isn't this a solution - the free market - global trade, etc?
Wouldn't this cause the manufacturers and wholesalers and retailers to make their prices more competitive with overseas?
Its the "invisible hand" of the marketplace.
All you good conservatives out there, isn't this a good solution since you praise the market. In the name of the market, the adam smith, the holy wall street journal.
And all you good liberals, isn't this what you want, to see people get their prescriptions at affordable price?
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This only addresses the prescription cost problem in America, not the other problems we face.
Answer:
In a word yes. Short term no but in the long term we have to learn how to compete in the world marketplace or die a slow death. Not going to be easy with 3 million people in jail though, I'd say impossible to carry that big a load and still compete.
It seems like a good idea. However, when you order medicine outside of the USA the pills you get are not subject to the same standards as the FDA. The head of China's FDA equivalent was just put to death for accepting bribes and allowing bad food and fake medicine out of the country. I'd rather pay extra money and get the actual medicine I need, not fakes or poison.
The first thing we have to do is make drugs affordable. That's as easy as falling off a log. We can do what the VA does. The VA buys large numbers of various drugs at wholesale prices and distributes them to veterans at cost. This means that a drug like Lipitor, that costs 'yer granny $150 bucks for a 30 day supply would cost her $12 bucks for a thirty day supply. The drug companies still make a nice profit...granny gets her Lipitor and she has money left over to buy groceries. Now doesn't that make a lot more sense than anything that the drug companies and their congress critter stooges have suggested? Why the American people allow themselves to get $%^ed over the way they do is a real mystery.
No, this is not a good solution.
Foreign drug prices are government regulated by foreign governments under trade deals with the pharma companies. Those foreign governments have no responsibility to negotiate on behalf of Americans whose government refuses to do the same for them.
The only way Americans should be allowed to buy drugs on foreign regulated markets is by emigrating to those countries.
We have to fix the problem at home, not run away from it.
EDIT: Don't you people understand that the problem isn't international competition? Everyone else is buying American drugs, but they get different prices under government regulated pricing agreements. There's no point in buying a pill from Pfizer, and American pharma company, in Canada and then importing it back.
All the rest of the good crap we get are brought in from other countries. . . . .(Toshiba laptop as we speak). . . . .why not our drugs? Prescription or otherwise.
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