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Case you're wondering more about the most recent "slap" to your health related holdings
He's gonna love his new job. A mere whisper with no substance can move markets and create instability around the globe. It used to be that the way to prevent the US from making an aggressive move against your country was to have nuclear weapons. A more up to date strategy would be to have a Trump hotel property.
Reimportation seems like a tailor-made proposal that hits the checkboxes for a Republican Congress:
- Reduce regulations (remove a regulatory ban) - check - Support free trade - check - Support American manufacturers (reimport American-made products) - check - Preserve property rights (drugs were manufactured in accordance with US patents) - check - Reduce crime (reimporters will no longer be committing crimes) - check
Heck, the Donald could even impose a 45% reimportation tariff and this would come out cheaper in many cases. Check and double check.
Reimportation doesn't provide a permanent fix. --- Drug makers will simply renegotiate with their counterparties in the countries which are the source of the reimportation (e.g. Canada et al), and place contractual restrictions on those counterparties' ability to do so.
We need legislation --- and perhaps more of the the Donald's "bully pulpit" to provide a fair deal to American patients. "Fair" is of course subjective -- but the status quo, where American consumers pay multiples of what consumers in other OECD countries pay, for the same product, is grossly unfair.
Does this mean that they didn't negotiate the best deals already, that they left money on the table? Maybe that's true for third world country deals (good PR and little profit lost), but in Canada?
WSJ, Dec. 1, 2015: Why the U.S. Pays More Than Other Countries for Drugs; subtitled: Norway and other state-run health systems drive hard bargains, and are willing to say no to costly therapy. (Link above is for Google search).
Reimportation is something that would bring down prices - regardless of how far or for how long. It's also one of the very few concrete proposals that Trump is on the record as supporting. The Reuters article said Trump didn't say how he would bring down drug prices. He had, at least in small part, this small part. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform (position paper)
What else Reuters missed was that the day before that article was written, the Senate blocked a bill amendment that would have allowed reimportation, as well as allowing Medicare to negotiate prices (a position Trump had also campaigned on).
Comments
I'm not sure what reasonable person would disagree with that statement.
- Reduce regulations (remove a regulatory ban) - check
- Support free trade - check
- Support American manufacturers (reimport American-made products) - check
- Preserve property rights (drugs were manufactured in accordance with US patents) - check
- Reduce crime (reimporters will no longer be committing crimes) - check
Heck, the Donald could even impose a 45% reimportation tariff and this would come out cheaper in many cases. Check and double check.
2012, The Hill, Senate Republicans criticize Obama as drug reimportation amendment fails
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/229397-republicans-senators-slam-obama-on-drug-reimportation
We need legislation --- and perhaps more of the the Donald's "bully pulpit" to provide a fair deal to American patients. "Fair" is of course subjective -- but the status quo, where American consumers pay multiples of what consumers in other OECD countries pay, for the same product, is grossly unfair.
Does this mean that they didn't negotiate the best deals already, that they left money on the table? Maybe that's true for third world country deals (good PR and little profit lost), but in Canada?
WSJ, Dec. 1, 2015: Why the U.S. Pays More Than Other Countries for Drugs; subtitled: Norway and other state-run health systems drive hard bargains, and are willing to say no to costly therapy.
(Link above is for Google search).
Legislation is moving in the opposite direction - I was serious about IP protection being a Congressional interest. As an example, buried in TPP is "what is called data protection to drug manufacturers ... [that will lead to] higher [prices] for everyday drugs."
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-21/new-trade-agreement-may-export-high-us-drug-prices-third-world-3
Reimportation is something that would bring down prices - regardless of how far or for how long. It's also one of the very few concrete proposals that Trump is on the record as supporting. The Reuters article said Trump didn't say how he would bring down drug prices. He had, at least in small part, this small part.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform (position paper)
What else Reuters missed was that the day before that article was written, the Senate blocked a bill amendment that would have allowed reimportation, as well as allowing Medicare to negotiate prices (a position Trump had also campaigned on).
Dec 6, 2016, The Hill, Sanders: GOP blocked 'Trump proposal' to lower drug prices
I haven't yet cross-checked the votes on the 2012 and 2016 amendments to see which Senators flipped.