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Edited on Thu Jun-30-05 06:51 AM by HamdenRice
<originally posted as a reply, I repost as an OP>
The Canadian politician who stated that Canada should not export drugs to the US was simply demonstrating his ignorance of the big pharma industry, and he has misled many people.
When the debate about Americans buying drugs in Canada first began, the MSM used a much more honest and revealing term to describe the process: drug reimportation. It was called reimportation, because Americans who purchase drugs from Canada are not buying some limited pool of Canadian-manufactured drugs; they are buying drugs made right here in the good ol' US of A. In other words, the so-called Canadian drugs are US or internationally manufactured drugs that have been exported to Canada, and then reimported back into the US at Canadian prices. This also shows the utter absurdity and dishonesty of shrub administration claims about the safety of drug imports from Canada; they are the same damned drugs!
This means that when we buy Canadian drugs, we are not snatching those drugs from the mouths of our Canadian bothers and sisters. If Americans purchase vast amounts of drugs from Canada, Canadian drug companies will simply import more of those drugs to meet the demand. The only Canadian resources we would be straining would be their postal service, Canadian branches of Federal Express and warehouses -- all at a tidy profit!
The whole reimportation system just shows that the prices of drugs are completely arbitrary. Big pharma wants to set them at whatever price the market will bear, even though the health insurance system, and the fact that many drugs are absolutely life saving means that there is no really effective, normal market for these drugs. So progressive, rational governments all over the world (except the US) realize that drug prices must be regulated and set by democratic political processes, not by big pharma extortion of the sick. All Canada really exports with its drugs is its public interest oriented and patient friendly drug regulatory system.
Reimportation actually is a kind of consumer-friendly globalization. Just as corporations use globalization to create a "race to the bottom" with respect to wages, labor conditions and environmental regulation -- that is in terms of the prices they pay for things -- drug reimportation and other forms of the international consumer market creates a consumer driven race to the bottom in terms of prices we as consumers pay for things.
What's good for the corporate goose is good for the consumer gander. Anything else is stacking the globalization deck in favor of the corporations.
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