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What’s happening? The Oregon legislature is working through a number of bills to lower healthcare costs which is important, as healthcare costs are a challenge across Oregon. Of all the proposals being discussed, one of them sacrifices safety to achieve cost savings: foreign drug importation. There are three bills which purport to get medicine from Canada: HB2680, HB2689, and SB…
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The New Mexico Pharmacists Association recently sent their own letter to members of Congress expressing their concerns about allowing drug importation. PSM had the chance to speak with their executive director to learn more about the realities and misconceptions that people have about prescription drugs and drug importation…
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The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced the largest counterfeit pill seizure in New Jersey history this month. In addition to large quantities of other illicit drugs, between 420,000 and 620,000 counterfeit Xanax were discovered during the arrest and search of Chester Anderson, Jarrette Codd, and Ronald MacCarty for their alleged role in selling $2.3 million worth of illicit drugs via the internet.
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In this editorial published on April 26, 2019, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, economist and President of American Action Forum, questions economic truths about drug importation:
“Drug reimportation has long been the fool’s gold of health policy, and the Florida bill is no different. It flunks a basic policy analysis. But most amazing, it is drafted to raise hope, but not actually help Floridians.”
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We recently ran an ad in Florida about the dangers of attempting to import medicine from Canada, and the risk of getting medicine from other countries like China where much of the world’s counterfeits come from. WESH 2 News serving Orlando put the ad through their exclusive Truth Test on April 25, 2019, and the claims in the ad rang true. The…
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In this piece published in the Washington Free Beacon on April 25, 2019, staff writer Charles Fain Lehman explores issues around Florida’s drug importation proposal. “Critics,” he notes, “fear that the actual realities of regulatory oversight—especially in the hand of an as-yet-unnamed private vendor—will simply be too challenging to manage responsibly.”
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In this piece, which was published in The Deseret News on April 24, 2019, pharmacist and Utah State Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers raises serious concerns about importation as a strategy to lower drug prices:
“Anyone who truly understands how drugs are sold and distributed in the U.S. knows that there are very solid technical reasons that such importation is not viable. There are also serious concerns about drug safety, since the CHS cannot guarantee origin and purity on foreign-sourced drugs.”
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In this piece, which was published on the ABC affiliate WJLA’s website on April 25, 2019, political analyst Boris Epshteyn explains that “this is a risky plan that will make it difficult to ensure that Floridians are receiving real and safe medicine.”
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Politifact.com emailed us this week with questions about a recent ad about the dangers of attempting to import medicine from Canada. They labeled it negatively, but we noticed that they ignored certain facts while coming to their conclusion. In the interest of fairness, we’ve published below both the email from Politifact and our heavily sourced response. Judge for yourself if legislators in Florida are being naive about the risks of importation in a world with a highly evolved criminal counterfeit scheme.
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Jacob Medina and his pregnant girlfriend, Diane Erika Marin, have been arrested in connection with a counterfeit pill distribution ring that is allegedly responsible for killing an Arkansas man, the KATV reports.
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