In reply to your editorial on the prescription drug bill, "Balancing act" (SN 7/28), it is to easy to say import prescription drugs from other countries so Americans pay less.
There are many factors that apathetic U.S. citizens don't take into account.
The first problem with this legislation is no prescription drugs chemicals are made in any other country than the United States unless you're talking about generic drugs. Ninety-eight percent of the world's' s dominant Parma companies (Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly) chemical production units are in the United States., i.e. Kalamazoo, then shipped to other places like Ireland and Puerto Rico to be finished and put into pill form.
What is really happening here is drug re-importation from other countries that impose price restrictions on the prescription drugs. Canada and the European Union impose a just above cost sale price.
That would be like telling Ford Motor Co. you can only sell cars for $2 more than what it costs to make the car. Another factor is U.S. citizens have access to the safest drugs in the world because of the Food and Drug Administration.
With the FDA' s stringent approval process from chemical production to pill, all U.S. citizens can have the luxury of knowing every time they put a drug in their system from the manufacturer, it's what they paid for and won't kill them.
Other countries benefit from this process, which leads to higher prices.
This entire safety system would be dissolved if this bill passed.
A good example of the problem here is the drug Lipitor, which in the European Union costs $15, while in the United States it costs $104.
But how many European Union residents take a cholesterol-lowering drug?
The real question here is why isn't Congress and the Senate fixing the health care system where a Medicare bill has been defeated twice?
It is just easier for Congress to say to older voters we are going to get cheap drugs for you so they can get re-elected, than fix the real problem which is the health care system in the United States.
It can be agreed upon that some prescription drugs profit margins may be too high on certain items, but people here need to look deeper into the issue than just say, "I want cheaper drugs."
If you get what you want in the short run, what could happen in the long run is very few new drugs for disease, less research and development, and untested drugs that you don't know are safe.
C. Swartout
2001 MSU graduate
