Dorgan Introduces Bill That Will Allow Imported Drugs from Canada
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Sep 29, 2009 3:00pm
Soon we'll find out if the Senate is really going to buck President Obama on the deal he cut with Big Pharma. I wonder how serious this is:
North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a member of Democratic leadership, isn't a party to that bargain. "Senator Dorgan intends to offer an amendment to the health reform bill and his expectation is that it will be one of the first amendments considered," his spokesman Justin Kitsch told HuffPost in an e-mail. "Prescription drug importation is an immediate way to put downward pressure on health care costs. It has bipartisan support, and has been endorsed by groups such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses and AARP."
U.S. patients pay far more than the rest of the world for prescription drugs. The Canadian government keeps prices down by using its purchasing power to negotiate for lower rates. Dorgan wants American consumers in on the deal.
A bill to allow re-importation -- S. 1232 - has 30 cosponsors, several Republicans among them, including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, John Thune (S.D.) and David Vitter (La.).
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would result in $50 billion in direct savings over the next decade, with $10.6 billion of that being savings to the federal government.
[...] The amendment threatens to blow up the deal Baucus and the White House cut with the drug makers. According to the deal, re-importation would not be part of comprehensive health care reform. And if the measure does save $50 billion, that will come from Big Pharma revenue and take it above the $80 billion in cuts it agreed to over ten years. It puts Congress on a collision course with its trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
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It only makes sense.
Why should we pay more than other countries?
Especially since these drugs are made in this country hence the reimportation part.
... Canada has a pretty big pharma industry too.
just looking for some sort of payoff from the White House and Big Pharma. A few "donations to his PAC," maybe a big new highway project out on the snowy tundra, and Dorgan'll go away quietly.
The research money for most of these drugs is paid for with government money.
Can't wait till Canada can get out of NAFTA and let the US sink.
Because it's the american dream ......... I don't think america has paied any where near enough what it should (and likely is going to) for what it's done to countries about the world in it's own hunt for profit.
Leave Canada out of this and sort your own crap out I'd say !
Obama screwed up big time on this one. Meanwhile, we are paying two to three times what most other countries pay in prescription costs.
The Obama bill is like agreeing to let crooks into your home to rob yoou, as long as they give you back $5 when they are through.
It's more like fifty times for an entire prescription.
We just CAN'T have affordable drugs - think of the poor companies and their expensive viagra/cialis/etc. research efforts!!
has enuff money to blow on FOX ads..........
research. Everybody who's not getting a slice from this deal is a sucker.
He's not going to buck Obama because his amendment will be defeated. Let's face it. The insurance lobby has the House & Senate in its back pocket. They control the horizontal. They control the vertical...
The vertical is the ever higher prices, the horizontal is the lobbyist entertaining of the Congress critters.
Cost $35 on co-pay, the generic cheapo ones cost $9 (here in MN), but they are less than a third of the dose size of the real ones.
This is where Canadian pharmacies have the USA chains beat. Irony is that most Canadian e-drugs are American owned.
If Congress legalizes Canadian drug orders, they'll find a way to jack the prices up or tax them to the equivalent of the USA pharms.
The real solution would be to make most, or all, asthma drugs OTC with restrictions similar to those on ephedrine. This would kick long-term druggies with emphysema off the insurance rolls for these drugs, lowering (we hope!) the rate of premium increases, it would enable po'folks to be more able to afford their childrens' medicines, and it would allow all of us childhood asthma cases who are growing old to get our meds without fear of the FDA confiscating them as they cross the borders.
Reefer, crack, tobacco, and meth smokers can purchase their drugs in five minutes with no paperwork, doses they can afford, and less interference from government than the truly ill must endure.
Interfering with therapeutic drugs and patients is an ongoing disgrace.
If this amendment passes and we are allowed to import drugs from Canada for example, what will stop the pharmaceutical companies from cutting down on their supply of drugs to Canada in an effort to prevent the availability for drugs to be shipped to the United States?
I support any effort that will stop pharma from taking advantage of us, but why can't the people we elect take our own companies on in forcing competition in the market place? Moneyed politicians.
Everyone would be in the same buying pool through a "Single Payer" system.
Since the government would be doing the "negotiating" to keep prices low, we would get the best prices.
The Canadian Government made the smart move and treat drug companies the way Wal-Mart treats their vendors in America: meet our low, low prices or you guys lose half of the national market.
Imagine it: Every scared old woman with liver problems, every disadvantaged child with strep throat having the negotiating power of the entire U.S. market behind them!
If we could get the money out of politics, we could put alot of this lobbying for donations to rest.
You ask "why can't the people we elect take our own companies on in forcing competition in the market place?"
Alas!
This illusion that there is such a thing as an "American Company" ..
I'm sure there are exceptions. Some companies doubtless have some civic, patriotic intentions - but surely none of the pharmaceutical companies.
It's likely too late for Americans to take back control of the companies now based in the US. That's likely a job for the international community - either the nations, or the people.
Otherwise just rename the planet Earth Inc.
I am concerned that this would have a very negative effect on the Canadian system.
Granted, I'm sure plenty of Canadian corporations are frothing at the mouth to suddenly expand their market so significantly.
" According to the deal, re-importation would not be part of THIS comprehensive health care reform BILL. "
There are no blanket agreements.
You have to communicate FACTS or your credibility will suffer.
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/09/29-2
Good. That deal needs to go.
Health reform should be about providing health care to PEOPLE, not protecting the profits of corporations that gouge people at their most desperate.
One of the reasons that Healthcare is about protecting the profits of corperations is because of corperate personhood. That, and the (false) idea that everyone will get incredibly stinking rich if they have a chance at the "free" market. PT. Barnum had it right: there's a sucker born every minute.
more smoke and mirrors.
These people in the government are owned by the big money it doesn't matter what we want we will get what ever trash they decide to throw our way. We need to rid ourselves of these slugs.It maybe the only way we can is to squash them. They keep finding ways to get back again and again.
republicanism is a mental illness!
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/paulprescot...
... professional, trés professional!
I hope they get it done. It's shameful that the Dems. are fighting each other on a true healthcare reform bill. This would at least go part of the way in reducing cost.
Too bad the health of the citizens doesn't factor into the formula for calculating the greatness of a nation....
but corporate profits sure do.
it might. Whatever greatness remains is more imagined than real. We're increasingly lagging the best in the world in the measures that should matter most.
But as long as the stock market goes up, all is well.
/snark
If the guns don't get me first.
It doesn't make much difference if Congress makes it legal to import drugs from Canada when the pharmaceutical companies have already threatened to cut off any Canadian pharmacy that re-exports to destinations in the U.S..
Canada is about to extradite our 'Prince of Pot' Marc Emery to a US prison.
Yup, have to get rid of the muppet in power in Canada and stop doing things like that, the north america continent is so beyond repair it's not even funny.
Canada has a fight on it's hands to take care of it's self with the decline of the US, it's going to be like being in a luxury yacht with some cool chilled out people who take care of each other, as a titanic of fat self obsessed greedy bastards sink ......
One of the best things that could happen at this point is chaos. We can start the ball rolling by doing everything possible to support this amendment and to break "the deal" (the unholy alliance and back room deal) between Big pharma and the Obama Administration.
If we completely dismember the deal, it will force administration to acknowledge the arrangement, which will embarass the administration and the deal backers in Congress. Once "the deal" is in the sunlight, Obama will be forced to back away from it because it is indefensible. I doubt Obama will be able to muster eloquent speeches to convince his base (or anyone for that matter) that the shady back room deal was anything other than legalized bribery.
Maybe Obama's next health care speech will start sounding like his campaign speeches, you know, the ones where he promised to lower prescription drug prices.
The medical industrial complex has written the health care bills and made all the back room deals already. The best thing to do is to use any amendments we can find to break all the deals. We need to break them on principle.
PS: Funny, I don't remember making any deal, but that is besides the point.
Senators Rockefeller, Schumer did a great job pointing out that the Medical Industrial Complex's contribution to the Health Care Reform is $20 Billion and in return they will get $500 Billion in TAX-PAYER FUNDED SUBSIDIES. Nice deal if you can get it. Oh, yeah the Medical Industrial Complex has bougth and paid for baucus, conrad, lincoln and all of the republicans. The worst Congress money can buy.
Criminally corrupt politicians are the reason the U.S. is ranked near the bottom of every catagory when ranked next to other modern, industrialized nations. Time for publically funded elections.
The Congress is back in session and doing the dirty work for the Medical Industrial Complex.
mcconnell $3.3M, hatch $2.9M, baucus $2.8M, grassley $2.7M,
lieberman $2.6M, burr $2.4M, ensign $2.4M, cornyn $2.2M, kyl $2.1M,
conrad $2.1M, cantor $1.8M, boehner $1.7M, coburn $1.2M, j wilson 800K
were paid by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Health Care Reform.
(Source: OpenSecrets.org)
Co-Author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of a Recent Harvard Study on Annual Deaths of America's Uninsured, says the lack of coverage can be tied to about 45,000 deaths a year in the United States. The only way to affordably cover all Americans is through a Medicare-for-All, Single-Payer System. A Single-Payer System would generate $300-$400 billion in administrative savings annually, enough to cover all of the uninsured, and to plug the gaps in coverage for Americans with only partial coverage. Obviously, Medicare-for-all is anathema to the insurance industry. What politicians are doing is saving insurance industry profits, by sacrificing American lives.
12 Million Americans were denied health care coverage by the Medical Industrial Complex because they had a pre-existing medical condition. 12K Americans are denied insurance coverage everyday by a for-profit Insurance bureaucrat. (Source: WaPo Article 05′ by Harvard Prof. E. Warren)
Medical malpractice lawsuits are a hot topic but, are they? Tort Reform is such a “Red Herring” and is easily disproved. A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.
bush(43) economic speech writer david frum, at least, is willing to admit the idea about selling insurance across state lines is a crock:
New Jersey health policies cost more in large part because New Jersey hospitals and doctors charge more. If I buy a cheaper Kentucky policy that reimburses my providers at Kentucky rates, leaving me to pay the balance, how much good does that do me? And if the Kentucky policy is made to pay New Jersey rates, there vanishes my low Kentucky price.
These are some of the easily refuted arguments bought and paid for by the Medical Industrial Complex to derail any chance of their criminally massive profits being reduced.
Follow the Money: Link
Call Congress and demand, Single-Payer Health Care for All!
(Toll Free # House and Senate)
1-866-338-1015 _____ 1-866-220-0044
1-800-473-6711 _____ 1-866-311-3405
Sign Single-Payer Petition: Link
Don’t let the Medical Industrial Complex steal your Health Care from you and your family by donating huge sums of money to Crooked Politicians in order to maintain the Status Quo. Keep up the good fight.
SEMPER FI!
I am wondering how this will impact drug prices on our own system. If you expand demand tenfold, I'd say prices are likely to rise.
For instance, we've never had a shortage of Tami-flu or other flu vaccines. What will happen if the drugs can be sold for a profit to US consumers who are accustomed to paying 2-3 times the price for the same medication.
The real issue here is that you are being gouged locally by your pharmaceutical companies. This is just a backdoor solution to the real problem on US soil.
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