House passes drug import bill!

[Zero Signal]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/943978.asp?0cv=CB10

The House approved legislation early Friday to allow the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from industrialized nations, brushing aside opposition from the Bush administration and a fierce lobbying campaign by the pharmaceutical industry.

THE VOTE was 243-186, and sent the measure to the Senate, where it faced an uncertain fate.

“I was not sent here by drug companies and I will not stand here and see American seniors take a back seat to the pharmaceutical industry,” said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Missouri.

“A bottle of tamoxifen, used to fight breast cancer, costs $360 in the United States. It costs $60 in Germany,” she added.

But critics argued the bill, while it held out the hope of lower prices, would sacrifice patient safety.

“The country is going to be flooded with unsafe pharmaceutical counterfeits, over-age pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals that don’t preserve and protect the safety of our citizens,” said Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has worked across the decades for patient safety legislation.

This next part struck me as, well...

The measure also would require imported medicine to be shipped in anti-tampering and anti-counterfeiting packaging.

But the Bush administration issued a statement calling the bill “dangerous legislation.”

And FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan said the measure “creates a wide channel for large volumes of unapproved drugs and other products to enter the United States that are potentially injurious to public health and pose a threat to the security of our nation’s drug supply.”

Dangerous? Most of the FDA approved drugs here in America can have some insane side-effects, like oh, DEATH, or rectal leakage, migraines, ulcers. I mean WTF, really? They seems to think that these drugs here are better than others from a different country, yet they will fuck you up a completely different way that what they are trying to treat.

The ONLY people that this bill is dangerous to are the greedy pharaceuctical companies that have a stranglehold on them here; in league with insurance companies, of course. I mean come on. $360 for something here that is $60 elsewhere?

[AChimp]

I find the "these drugs might not be safe!" argument to be totally hilarious. The drugs that we have in Canada are made by the exact same company that produces them in the U.S.

Sometimes they are made in factories here, other times they are shipped in from the U.S.

Now, if the pharmaceuticals are saying that their own product brought in from another country might not be safe for Americans, well... are they safe for us? If they're not safe for us, are the American versions still safe for Americans? Hell, like I said before, sometimes we just send our U.S. imports right back across the border.

The reason why the companies are getting pissed off is because of greed. In Canada, a drug patent lasts only a few years, and then other companies can start producing it for next to nothing, and that's what has all these drug CEOs scared shitless.

[Vibecrewangel]

It's about freakin' time!

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Some good news is nice.