The House of Representatives recently voted to allow “reimportation” of drugs from Canada, at that country’s reduced process. But as Nina Owcharenko of The Heritage Foundation notes, that could end up hurting people in both countries. “The effect of reimportation,” she writes in a recent paper, “in all probability would be the opposite of that intended by its proponents: Prices would be more likely to increase in Canada than they would be to decrease in the United States.”
Prescription drugs are making life better, and even making life possible, for millions of Americans. In fact, prescription drugs are probably the biggest difference between medicine today and medicine 40 years ago. Back then, they were so rare that Congress didn’t bother to include a drug benefit in Medicare -- a matter lawmakers are still wrestling with today.
Today, drugs help patients regulate their blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol and allergies. They help AIDS patients stay alive while scientists search for a cure. Drug companies are racing with government researchers to find that cure, and my money’s on the drug industry.
Eventually, they’ll also find cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, arthritis, and other diseases -- unless we strangle Research and Development by trying to limit the profits made by the drug industry.
Consumers and insurance companies, of course, want the lowest prices possible for prescription drugs. But let’s make sure that in striving for that goal, we don’t end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: The R and D departments of our drug companies.
The free market is working here in the United States, and it’s making life better for all of us -- not just drug-company executives.