Archive link. https://archive.is/N4Rqj
Some personal editorializing: This is a pretty remarkable first because of how captive we Americans are to pharma prices. Famously, when Medicare Part D was brought into existence by law it restricted the federal government from negotiating Part D drug prices. To me, shopping for drugs in Canada is tackling the symptom and ignores the cause. I wonder if this gets more traction with more states how it might affect drug prices in Canada, too.
The real solution to all this, of course, would be nationalize the healthcare industry in all aspects and to create a single payer healthcare system.
Hmm! Why would prescription drugs be cheaper in Canada? What could possibly be the difference between America and its northern neighbor, they’re both equally advanced and developed. Something just makes their drugs cheaper. Weird! 🫠
Don’t worry, our right-wing nutjobs are slowly chipping away at privatizing our health care system. Sooner or later we’ll probably reach parity. 🙄
See also, the UK. Their healthcare system, the NHS, has been chipped away at by subsequent right wing governments. Now that there are huge waiting lists for even basic procedures and more shortfalls in services provided, right wingers are now calling for the actual dismantling of the NHS, and moving to a more American setup. They claim that centralized healthcare doesn’t work and private health providers are ‘more efficient’.
They refuse to acknowledge however that their repeated attempts to reduce funding and make life harder for staff is what got them where they are. Centralized universal healthcare isn’t inherently bad or inefficient. It is only made bad by a lack of funding or addressing its issues. Private healthcare is not the fucking answer.
I’m not even British, I’m from Ireland, our healthcare system has a different issue, it’s severely bloated by consultants, bad management and bureaucracy. It might be kinda shit sometimes, but at least, if I ever have a heart attack or a stroke, I know I won’t need to worry about bills. It’ll be a few hundred max.
It must be because Canada is part of the commonwealth 😏. If we had King Charles on our money who knows what great things might start happening.
I literally at least once a year lament the shortsightedness of the ultra-libertarians who founded the country. Imagine what we could have had as part of the Commonwealth over centuries!
I’m guessing:
- France probably would’ve sold Louisiana to Spain instead because they were enemies with England
- Spain would’ve controlled the West Coast, at least all of California
- Mexico might be a major power, controlling up to California and east to the Mississippi
- Hitler probably would’ve won against the UK, not sure if they’d cross the Atlantic
Then again, there’s a lot of complexities when dealing with revisionist history.
Well yeah, when you subsidize something, it usually gets cheaper at the counter, since you’re paying for it with tax dollars instead.
People who need cheaper prescription drug prices aren’t paying a lot in taxes either.
Also, learn MMT. Taxes don’t pay for anything when you can print your own currency.
Perhaps, I don’t know much about Canadian taxes. I do know that, at least in Scandinavia, socialized medicine is largely funded by the middle class, not by the wealthy, whereas the US tax system is a lot heavier on the wealthy than the middle class or the poor.
But that’s not my point, my point is that US citizens buying Canadian drugs are benefiting from Canadian taxes. I’m not sure how that works in Florida here, I’m guessing Florida gets a worse deal than a citizen visiting Canada.
Seems oddly progressive until you take into account the high percentage of Florida’s population that’s retirees and boomers who are probably heavily medicated.
Just goes to show that Florida’s regressive legislators know what side their bread is buttered on. We always knew that Republicans don’t actually believe in anything besides staying in power at all costs, but this is interesting in that someone crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion that they had to actually appeal to the voter base instead of allowing their constituents to be fleeced by pharmaceutical companies who undoubtedly lobbied against this. Hopefully this is just the beginning and causes inflated drug process in this country to normalize a other states adopt this
No no, you don’t understand, this is a different country’s government healthcare so it’s all good. It’s only US government provided healthcare that’s evil.
/s
Seriously though, the mental gymnastics that Republicans need to engage in to justify their crap policies is mind boggling. They create problems, partially solve the problems they created in the worst and/or most corrupt way possible, and then have the gall to take a victory lap over it.
As a Canadian, I can’t see this not fucking over our own access to medication that we need, especially when our own governments are actively trying to dismantle what little socialised healthcare we have. It’s going to be like the Ozempic weight loss craze depriving diebetics of the drug, but for every drug. You’re one of the wealthiest states in the single wealthiest country in the world, surely you have the means to provide your own citizens with affordable medication, at least much more so than Canada with our tiny population density and comparatively low GDP. To put it not so politely, we shouldn’t be punished and forced to take on the burden of providing medication to you simply because you choose not to.
Look we’ve been trying, the private insurance companies aren’t budging. Single Payer is the goal, but we’re gonna need to not die in the meantime, so hand over the affordable insulin.
so hand over the affordable insulin.
Because Americans are somehow more deserving of not dying than Canadians? If a Canadian diabetic suddenly can’t afford Insulin because it’s all going to the US, that doesn’t matter to you? Should every country be obliged to pitch in to make sure the richest country in the world has enough resources to sustain itself even at the cost of their own citizens’ lives, then?
Also, if you recognize that you need Canada’s help to, quote, “not die,” maybe demanding we “hand it over” isn’t the best way sway attitudes about this over here.
You act like scarcity’s real, take it up with the 1% who create it artificially and stop victim blaming.
And while you’re gone, we’ll be using dat insulin, because I’m tired of reading about what a bright future this teenager had if only he had just a few million shillings more for this medicine that is pretty much not even slightly hard to obtain in literally every other country.
Florida no!
Wait… wait, no this is a good thing, sorry, force of habit. Carry on
So, we’ve just been doing this illegally all these years?
