As Senate Finance Committee Convenes on Healthcare Costs, First Do No Harm
As the United States Senate Finance Committee convenes today for a meeting entitled "The Rising Cost of Health Care: Considering Meaningful Solutions for All Americans," the enduring adage of medical care applies: Do no harm.
Specifically, as we've detailed at CFIF, we must especially avoid potentially catastrophic ideas like drug price controls (whether through so-called "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) programs or any other) and violations of patent and intellectual property (IP) protections in which the United States leads the world. Indeed, our more free-market approach explains why America leads the world in lifesaving healthcare innovation, accounting for an astonishing two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world each year:
The reasons that MFN schemes would only exacerbate…[more]
With its population of just 38 million, Canada is little more than one-tenth the size of the United States at 330 million.
In fact, Canada has 1 million fewer residents than California alone.
Accordingly, the strangely persistent myth that importing drugs from Canada would substantively lower costs or otherwise improve American healthcare fails on the level of simple mathematics.
Worse than that arithmetical illogic, however, drug importation also introduces a sudden risk of dangerous or even deadly counterfeits entering the U.S.
Ignoring those…