Purchasing Drugs from Canada is a No-Brainer to Anybody but a Politician

Congress is once again debating whether or not to allow Americans to purchase prescription drugs from Canada where prices are much lower. In fact, Americans pay the highest prices on the planet for prescription drugs. The way I look at it, we are subsidizing Canadians and everybody else while our health care costs are burying us.

The FDA, a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the pharmaceutical industry, and some politicians would have us believe that it would be dangerous to allow us to purchase prescription drugs from Canada. As if the FDA had a good track record of keeping dangerous drugs off the market.

When my health “insurance” carrier removed a prescription drug from its formulary, I had to buy it out-of-pocket for $400/month. I looked online and found the same brand-name drug for sale in Canada for $120! But according to US law, I am not allowed to purchase it from Canada.

Clearly that law is protecting the pharmaceutical industry far more than it is protecting me. If we as a country could cut our prescription drug costs by 50% or more, think about how much we would save in overall health care costs. And it would be so simple to do compared to the complex health care plans that Congress has been debating on and off for the past decades with no results.

And the reality is that, if the law were to change, the prices would become more balanced. If we were able to purchase the drugs from Canada for half the price, Drug companies would lower the prices in the US while raising them elsewhere in order to maintain the same revenue. In the end, we could go back to purchasing our drugs right here in the US under the “careful” scrutiny of the FDA.

If Congress doesn’t pass this legislation, it is nothing less than disgraceful.