President Trump loves protectionism but he gives Americans the same “protection” that the wolf gave to the lamb. On January 20, the Food and Drug Administration and Customs and Border Protection will effectively ban almost all personal prescription imports, bushwhacking millions of Americans who rely on Canadian pharmacies.
Trump often brags that the U.S. has the world’s lowest drug prices. He also brags that he has lowered drug prices by 500% so he starts out with a helluva cloud over his credibility.
In reality, prescription drug prices in the U.S. are roughly triple the cost in other affluent nations. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found the highest rate ever of Americans worried about affording prescription drugs – six out of ten adults. Almost half said they had not filled prescriptions, skipped doses, or took other steps to curtail their costs.
The Washington Post reported the case of 76-year-old Linda Klonsky suffering from meibomian gland dysfunction. She previously paid $250 for three months of eye drops for $250 shipped Canada to her Silver Spring, Maryland home. But restrictions on drug imports this summer sent the price of her drugs up almost ninefold. Klonsky lamented: “I’m being squeezed between the American drug company and Trump’s tariffs.”
I’m in the crosshairs of this trade battle. Eight years ago, I was diagnosed with glaucoma. With daily eye drops and regular ophthalmologist visits, my vision has remained fairly stable. I’ve tried numerous prescription eye drops but Lumigan is the only effective one that doesn’t give me butt-kicking headaches. Lumigan costs ten times more in the U.S. than in Canada.
I found a trustworthy Canadian online pharmacy that delivers Lumigan for barely a third of the U.S. price. That is typical of the savings pocketed by Americans purchasing from licensed Canadian pharmacies, according to the Campaign for Personal Prescription Importation.
Six years ago, when he was running for re-election, Trump touted a plan to permit state governments to “go to Canada and buy your drugs for a fraction of the price” in the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Department Alex Azar certified that permitting states to import Canadian drugs “poses no additional risk to the public’s health and safety and will result in a significant reduction in the cost of covered products to the American consumer.” But that program was stillborn in large part due to opposition from U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Federal policies have created many perverse incentives on pharmaceutical pricing. Prior to turning 65, I could use various discounts and rebates to get Lumigan in the U.S. much cheaper than the full retail price. However, once a person becomes eligible for Medicare, no discounts or rebates are permitted. Medicare turbo-charges drug price inflation while often providing only an illusion of a safety net for recipients. I had good reasons for vigorously opposing the creation of Medicare drug subsidies in 2004 – to no avail.
I am effectively subsidizing Medicare by buying Canadian. Medicare now covers the cost of any recipient’s prescription drug expenditure above $2100 per year. If I bought Lumigan at the full U.S. price of $265 each month, my annual cost would be $3180 and Medicare would pay $1080. Medicare Part D plans I have used did not offer decent discounts on Lumigan. Thanks to my Canadian escape valve, Medicare pays zero for my Lumigan regardless of the extortionate price at CVS.
I have scant other prescription costs, and I can save a thousand dollars a year by buying Lumigan abroad without coverage from Medicare. The vast majority of Americans who order prescription drugs from Canada are over 65 and are paying out-of-pocket, providing windfall savings for Medicare. But practically nobody in Washington has given a damn about saving tax dollars since the Reagan era.
Big Pharma lobbyists warn that permitting Americans to directly import the drugs they need is too risky. Indeed, tainted eye drops have been a big problem in recent years. The FDA recently recalled almost 4 million eye drop bottles due to possible contamination. But those bottles were produced in Illinois and California, not the Yukon or Nova Scotia.
“Why would the FDA want to prosecute people just trying to afford their blood pressure, asthma, diabetes medicine?” said Lucia Mueller, president of PharmacyChecker, an organization that vets online pharmacies. Here’s a woman who doesn’t know the history of high-profile raids designed to make FDA officials famous. FDA has a “zero tolerance except for price-gouging” policy.
In the past, the FDA usually turned a blind eye to prescription drug imports of less than 90 days’ personal supply, which may be in a legal gray zone. Perhaps this article will spur the FDA to target me and my bootleg eye drops. Whatever – I’m accustomed to the feds denouncing my articles, from the chief of the FBI to the Secretary of Agriculture and even the Postmaster General. I’ve been thrashing protectionist schemes and the FDA for more than 35 years and it is too late to stop now.
I recently thumped Trump’s pending Canadian embargo in the New York Post. Plenty of people responded by finger-wagging that I should be happy with the lower-priced generic version of Lumigan. But “generic” is a pharmaceutical term that often means “close enough for government work.” Until very recently, the generic version of the eye drops had triple the dose of the active ingredient – with no extra charge for those durn headaches.
If Trump bans Americans from purchasing their prescriptions abroad, I will survive. The patents on Lumigan expire next summer and the price will likely fall sharply unless rascally lawyers find a new pretext to screw American consumers on the price. But hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of other Americans will suffer severe hardship from Trump’s border closure. Tim Smith, general manager of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, said that people “are coming to us because they can’t afford the drugs where they live.” Unfortunately, that is not a problem for Washington bureaucrats and political appointees.
I am looking for no subsidy or favors from Washington. All I want is the freedom to purchase the drugs I need without getting blindsided by Uncle Sam.
We don’t need federal eye-drop police to protect Americans against low prices. If the United States actually had the lowest drug prices in the world, Trump would not need to take Americans hostage to allow Big Pharma to continue gouging them with high prices.
Reprinted with author’s permission from his website.
