Drug reimportation and its potential benefits for Americans

Drug Reimportation

The Need for Drug Reimportation

There is a growing problem in the United States that often gets caught up in larger debates regarding policy and spending, and thus does not always receive the specific attention it deserves. Especially with healthcare generally being such a controversial topic, yet only one such topic of extreme political and directly practical importance in the country today, specific issues within the broader issue of healthcare are quite often lost as they are out-clamored by larger and more general problems. The specific problem addressed in this paper is that of the high cost of prescription drugs that Americans face, and even more specifically this paper will deal with a potential solution to this problem that has faced -- and continues to face -- opposition from several sources despite being supported by many other individuals and advocacy groups as well as making logical sense. This solution is drug reimportation, which simply put is the importing of drugs that are manufactured by United States companies but that are either also manufactured in other countries more cheaply, or that are sold in these countries at lower prices than they are sold in the United States.

Canada is one of the primary sources cited as a likely candidate for drug reimportation into the United States, as it has a regulation agency with highly similar standards to the United States' own Federal Drug Administration and tests regularly to ensure proper chemical makeup and safety (Choudry & Detsky, 2005). The only truly valid concern that has been raised with reimportation is the lack of safety standards that such a program would entail, and legal importation from sources such as Canada -- where regulation is at least as tight as it is in the United States -- easily puts these worries aside. It is actually more dangerous not to have such a program in place, as illegal and/or unregulated reimportation occurs anyway due to the piece difference and consumers could receive sub-par medicines or even dangerous or non-effective fabrications.

The other commonly cited argument against the importation of drugs is the fact that pharmaceutical companies depend on the income from United States' consumers to cover the extremely high costs of researching and developing new pharmaceutical products (Sawkar, 2005). While it is definitely true that these companies spend a great deal of money on research and development, for which they certainly deserve and in fact need to be compensated (not to mention their right to make a profit, and the fact that profit potential is a major driver in innovation), the amount of profit and compensation that comes solely from the United States is inordinate when compared to that provided by other countries. Nearly half of all revenue going to pharmaceutical companies every year comes from United States' consumers (Sawkar, 2005). The argument that drug reimportation would damage companies' innovation and profit potentials implies that it is the United States' sole responsibility to provide funds for these goals; if reimportation were allowed then prices would even out, meaning other countries would start paying a fair share towards research and development costs while the United States would experience a savings.