People in Florida could wait years for lower-cost medications, if they get them at all, experts say.
The plan to allow Florida to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada is already facing outrage from Canadians who claim it could make their own drug supply shortages worse. And experts in the U.S. have doubts the program will ever help people in Florida get a cost break on medications for conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
After years of federal efforts to lower prescription drug prices, is a shaky plan to import them from Canada the best the U.S. can do?
“The U.S. needs to solve its own drug pricing problem, and not rely on other countries to do it for them,” said Dr. Joel Lexchin, a professor emeritus at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto.
Under a new policy the Food and Drug Administration approved last week, the Florida government will be able to purchase prescription drugs in bulk directly from wholesalers in Canada, where drugs are often cheaper than in the U.S.
“It’s almost laughable that the U.S. thinks that they’re going to solve their problems about prices with Canadian drug supply, which is already stretched to the limit,” said Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a professor emerita of medical history and medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Other states seeking mass drug imports
The push to allow states to buy prescription drugs from Canada in bulk has been in the works since at least 2019, when the Trump administration launched preliminary plans.
The Biden administration has taken its own steps to lower health care and prescription drug costs, including signing the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowered the cost of insulin for people on Medicare, among other provisions. However, this is the first action by the FDA to allow mass drug importation.
On Monday, the Biden administration appointed Stacy Sanders to become the first chief competition officer in the Department of Health and Human Services, with a priority of eliminating what it calls “corporate greed” in health care.
“This work just builds on the things that we are already doing,” Sanders said about the FDA’s move in an interview. “We’re going to continue to use any and all avenues as an agency to work to bring down prices and ramp up competition.”