While conservative US opponents are being unfair to the Canada's record on medicine safety with bogus worries about counterfeit drugs raining down from up north, they have noted one hidden danger of note to Canadians, that the Canadian market is so small that continuing to operate in it under a reimportation regime would lead to net losses because so much product shipped to Canada would come back to the US as to eviscerate pharmaceutical industry profitability. This has happened already to Glaxo has already taken action but, not wanting to make the economic case, has cited health and safety issues. Others, like Merck are likely to follow suit.
Glaxo's problem is that they don't want to explicitly make the case for the dead and dying a decade from now from depressed profits today. But it isn't tomorrow's victims alone that exist, it's today's because the actions a decade or more ago are costing lives today as drugs could have been discovered years earlier if the pharma industry had had more widespread free market conditions.
quotation note: The observant reader will notice that I'm linking to Bernie Sanders' site, a man who I have little in common with and would not shake his hand if I met him (socialists have too much blood on them for me to be comfortable with).
I've received some private criticism about such links and links where I don't 100% agree with the article but thought it a useful example of where a major political pole was headed. I've decided that I don't agree with limiting links in this fashion, that it would create an echo chamber effect and just not be either practical or fun. And until somebody starts paying me, it needs to at least be fun.
Posted by TMLutas at July 24, 2003 12:14 PM