So much for President Donald Trump’s “America first” motto.
Trump’s Health and Human Services department unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would “lay the foundation for the safe importation of certain drugs originally intended for foreign markets.”
Eli Lilly is going to have to impose sanctions on HHS.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar claimed the plan was a pathway to ending “foreign freeloading.”
Does this mean that tRump will simultaneously declare Canada a part of the United States by an emergency Executive Order?
I’ll believe the plan when or if drug prices actually come down. He’s promised a lot, especially to his base, and pretended he’s accomplished all of it when in fact its been one lie after another.
Trudeau should troll Trump by threatening to stem the tide of Americans coming into Canada by building a wall-- and saying that Trump will pay for it.
How long before Big Pharma begins targeting the GOP for restraint of trade or some such nonsense? Big Pharma has much deeper pockets. This might not go well for 2020.
This is like getting up to change the channel despite knowing that there’s a remote on the side-table next to you. These fucking people will do anything to avoid the correct solutions in order to protect the profit margins of the donor class.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar claimed the plan was a pathway to ending “foreign freeloading.”
I’m a little confused. Just how is Canada freeloading off us?
Someone let Cory Booker know. He was opposed to this when it came up in the senate.
Here’s a good starting point: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/30/12945756/prescription-drug-prices-explained
I guess that for the World’s Greatest Negotiator this is easier than, you know … actually negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies.
So does Trump now want us to freeload off of Canada’s pharmaceutical regulatory system?
Yep. Trump’s been a freeloader since he dropped out of his mother. He’s mastered it. Just ask all the people (and banks) he never paid or never paid back.
We send it to them and they sell it at a lower price to their citizens. When its imported back to us it becomes inflated because that’s what US drug companies want and how they make their profits. The drugs sold directly without being imported are already inflated for profit. Drug companies aren’t forced to negotiate their prices here by laws already on the books. That’s what their lobbyists insist on when they give to politicians to do their bidding. They are among the biggest donors to these same politicians. Its a corrupt system that primarily all Republicans and some Dems have no problem keeping going. That’s my understanding at least.
Why would Canada, or any other nation for that matter, want to help extend the lives of U.S. citizens? I mean, denying life saving drugs to one of us has a 50/50 chance of causing a very deserving asshole an expedited mortality
Yes. That’s what is so ridiculous about calling it “foreign freeloading”. Its a ruse.
The implication is that Canada is being considered some kind of bad actor because they aren’t regarded as domestic in these plans to reshape prices, while also being considered our neighborly savior from our own horribly imposed system that we managed to put on ourselves.
So even while this administration needs Canada’s help, they have to somehow insult them. Its all in their messaging which is always such bullshit.
Its simpler just to make negotiating drug prices for Medicaid and Medicare the law by a % of what it takes to produce the drugs.
I guess the idea here is that if drugmakers see Americans buying from Canadian pharmacies to save money they’ll renegotiate their deal with Canada to make them pay more. How does that benefit us exactly? Are they then going to lower our prices out of benevolence?
Seriously, the biggest problem in America are conservatives solving problems invented by Limbaugh’s Oxybrain to blame liberals and foreigners every time capitalism and free-markets screw people over. That’s why so-called Free Market Conservatives think prices are set to cover costs. It’s all about how we need to help businesses so they’ll charge us less; because they don’t understand capitalism or how prices are set.
Many are already getting their insulin in Canada:
Travis Paulson, another member of last weekend’s caravan, can remember when insulin cost $8 a vial.
“It just kept climbing,” he said.
The medication is now so expensive that he doesn’t use health insurance to buy it. Instead, he gets it mostly from Canada — driving there from his Eveleth home when the weather is good or using a mail-order pharmacy in Vancouver. He hasn’t bought insulin in the United States for many years.
“It is just craziness to what the prices have gotten to in America,” he said.
Paulson paid about $410 in Canada for 15 vials of insulin that would have cost $5,250 in the States. The supply should last him three to four months.
“Foreign freeloading”?? What in the actual f*ck is he talking about? The pharmaceutical companies selling overpriced drugs are U.S.-based. Please.
I think this link says it best:
The fact that our government is the only major world government that refuses to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies has led to a rather desperate movement in the U.S. A large number of people— and several politicians— have proposed reimporting medications from other, smaller countries that have successfully negotiated lower prices for these medications. This strategy would result in lower drug prices for us but, think for a minute, how ridiculous is that?
Our government refuses to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies so, instead, we’ll use the governments of other, smaller countries to do the job we could do better and more effectively if allowed? Really? This shows yet again that our own government has gone out of its way to make our healthcare system not just inefficient, but outright surreal.
Don’t you know by now Dump is just word salad. It’s not suppose to make sense
