Bob Goldberg runs us through a timely tutorial on the fuzzy math of Canadian drug importation …
The Canadian internet pharmacies … otherwise known as the companies that divert products from it’s citizens and pay doctors to sign off on prescriptions from patients they never see for huge profits while also setting up off-shore warehouses where they repackage counterfeit pills from Iran and re-sell them to American seniors, wants Medicare to know that they, not the new prescription drug benefit is the cheaper source of drugs for older Americans. Now, setting aside the counterfeiting and the diversion and the illegality of the scrip writing enterprise in Canada, let’s do the math one more time. Canada is a country of 25 million citizens.
The Medicare program serves 42 million seniors and people with disabilities. Canadian internet drug sales to America now total $700 million. Canada’s total domestic drug expenditure is about $11 billion. Medicare expects to provide about $25 billion worth of drugs to seniors under the new benefit. The fastest growing segment of the Canadian drug business is … the importation of drugs from centers of drug manufacturing excellence such as Pakistan, Iran and Russia … information that neither the Canadian internet pharmacies or its boosters in our Congress such as Anne Northrup, Gil (I will impose tariffs on Canadian cheese) Gutknecht or the media.
