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> Nice. How come no one can ship it across the pond and stock it then? Because reimporting prescription drugs (manufactured in the US and sold abroad) is ille
by chimeracoder 8y ago
> Nice. How come no one can ship it across the pond and stock it then?
Because reimporting prescription drugs (manufactured in the US and sold abroad) is illegal. There was a bill that would have allowed this, but it was voted down in the Senate last January.
To be entirely honest, if that bill ever did pass, there would be serious pressure political pressure on European governments to ban re-exports of prescription drugs from the EU. The current barrier to trade is what enables European governments to set low prices for prescriptions while still maintaining the same level of profits for European pharmaceutical companies - the latter simply raise their prices in the US to make up the difference.
- rb808 8y agoReimporting ban makes sense. I figured Europe had a different manufacturer.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoSo the examples of European healthcare working well are (somewhat) contingent on price gouging Americans?
- billmalarky 8y agoAmerica subsidizes more than just healthcare development for Europe. Our massive military budget provides global security/stability for all of our allies. No strong need to have a large expensive standing army if your ally has that covered. >So the examples of European healthcare working well are (somewhat) contingent on price gouging Americans? It's more related to the development of new healthcare technologies/medicine. Once a drug is developed it's super cheap to produce and distribute. Getting it developed is where $X billion is spent. If the US incentivized global pharmaceutical companies less by allowing for less profit, the drugs we have now would still exist but new development would probably decrease significantly. That said there are most likely solutions to this problem (government research into medicine instead of for-profit etc).
- rescbr 8y agoEh, you can find it in Brazil, made locally (so no reimporting issues), with no subsidies, for R$ 2,45 (around $0.70) for a box of 30 pills, retail.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> Eh, you can find it in Brazil, made locally (so no reimporting issues), The US doesn't permit importing those drugs period (regardless of where they're manufactured). The topic is generally referred to as "reimporting", and in this case the drug is manufactured by a US company, but it doesn't matter if the drug was manufactured by a Brazilian company; it can't be imported from that manufacturer to the US.