America’s Prescription Drug Plan Essay -- Essays Papers Health Medicin

America’s Prescription Drug Plan Graphs Not Available For the past couple of years there has been a bitter battle between Canada and the United States over the importation of prescription drugs. Unfortunately due to amount of uninsured Americans who cannot afford these drugs in the United States, they must travel across the border and buy them in Canada. Currently the United States has made it illegal for anyone but the manufacturer or a selected representative to import prescription drugs into the United States. However the increasing difference in price between prescriptions in Canada and the United States has created an opportunity for Canadian businessmen and women to export these prescription drugs from Canada to the United States. According to the Fraser Institute, â€Å"Canadian mail-order pharmacies currently enjoy reported sales of about US$650 million, a trivial portion of the American market for prescription drugs (Harris 2003).† There are several concerns regarding the drug trade with Canada: one is the cross-borde r trade of pharmacies could be harmful, and two it will eventually cause drug prices in Canada to increase. In turn, will leading to increased pressure for explicit price controls in the United States which would cause a reduction in medical research and development. Several Aspects of the United States drug market make it stand out from other markets. One of them as stated above is R&D for creating new drug products. As long as the United States is selling prescription drugs at such high prices (in order to support the R&D), Canada will be able to free ride based on the work done by the US manufactures. The competition between drug manufactures is extremely competitive, and developing new drugs and get... ...these drugs. The CBO concluded â€Å"the average price for patented drugs in other industrialized countries is 35-55% lower than in the United States. Ultimately there is a problem, with the prescription drug trade and a solution need to be found quickly. Whether it is a two-tiered system, a mulit-tierd system, or a parallel trade relative to income system the problem needs to be dealt with and fixed. Otherwise people are going to get sick and due to the high cost of prescription drug and health care they will lose the chance to get better. Work Cited Beckman, Ph. d, Steven. International Trade, University of Colorado at Denver. Fall, 2004. http://www.theorator.com/bills107/s2244.html http://www.affordablerx.com/newsandmedia/062103.html Congressional Budget Office, Washington D.C. April 29, 2004. http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5406&sequence=0