{"id":25370,"date":"2019-08-01T16:29:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T20:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=25370"},"modified":"2019-08-01T23:42:57","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T03:42:57","slug":"drug-importation-an-inexplicably-bad-new-proposal-from-the-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/25370\/drug-importation-an-inexplicably-bad-new-proposal-from-the-trump-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug Importation: An Inexplicably Bad New Proposal from the Trump Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Trump Administration through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inexplicably introduced a proposal<\/a> to begin drug importation from other countries.<\/p>\n

Currently, Americans enjoy the safest medicine market in the entire world under the system monitored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).\u00a0 According to FDA estimates<\/a>, over 99% of drugs making their way into the U.S. via international mail failed to comply with its standards, and the United Nations World Health Organization estimates<\/a> that fully 10% of all medicines worldwide are actually counterfeit.\u00a0 That’s an enormous and unacceptable threat.<\/p>\n

It’s therefore no surprise that a bipartisan array of experts and officials, including Trump Administration officials, have long panned the drug importation idea.\u00a0 Just last year, for instance, HHS Secretary Alex Azar labeled<\/a> drug importation a “gimmick,” emphasizing that, “the last thing we need is open borders for unsafe drugs.”\u00a0 Recent FDA Commissioner similarly lambasted<\/a> the idea and detailed the numerous threats that it entails.\u00a0 A collection of FDA Commissioners spanning the years 2002 through 2016 went so far as to write an open letter to Congress<\/a> in 2017, explaining how drug importation, “could lead to a host of unintended consequences and undesirable effects, including serious harm stemming from the use of adulterated, substandard or counterfeit drugs.”<\/p>\n

Safety concerns, however, aren’t the only problem with the drug importation idea.\u00a0 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has studied the issue and concluded<\/a> that drug importation would have little to no impact on actually lowering prices.\u00a0 Former FDA Commissioner Gottleib concurred<\/a> that the plan “would have added so much cost to the imported drugs; they wouldn’t be much cheaper than drugs sold inside our closed American system.”\u00a0 Part of the problem, according to a Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) statement<\/a> released just yesterday, is that Canada’s market couldn’t handle the sudden onslaught of American demand, and importation would crash their market on which the U.S. drug importation plan would rely.<\/p>\n

Additionally, as we at CFIF have long emphasized<\/a>, importing other nations’ pharmaceutical policies and pricing would reduce drug innovation and availability to American consumers.\u00a0 Even highly developed nations enjoy far fewer new life-saving and life-improving pharmaceuticals than the U.S., which should trigger alarm for every American.<\/p>\n

This constitutes a rare unforced error, as drug importation violates free market principles, in addition to the fact that imported drugs meet neither safety nor dependability standards.<\/p>\n

How else can we be certain that this is a terrible idea?\u00a0 Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (D – Vermont) advocates it<\/a>.\u00a0 That says all we need to know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Trump Administration through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inexplicably introduced a proposal to begin drug importation from other countries. Currently, Americans enjoy the safest medicine market in the entire world under the system monitored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).\u00a0 According to FDA estimates, over 99% of drugs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4962,1136,186,4805],"class_list":["post-25370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-drug-importation","tag-fda","tag-hhs","tag-pharmaceuticals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25370"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25373,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25370\/revisions\/25373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}