The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new policy in January 2024 that allows the state of Florida to buy prescription drugs directly from wholesalers in Canada where prices are usually much cheaper than in the United States. This would give Floridians access to the lower drug prices paid by people in Canada.
This announcement has received a great deal of attention because it is the first time the FDA has granted authority for a state to safely import prescription drugs from another country.
High prescription drug costs are a concern for the American public with both Democrats and Republicans supporting proposals in the past to make medications more affordable, including importing drugs from Canada.
However, Florida must now take additional steps before the FDA will allow any drugs to be imported, and could face other obstacles to implementation, meaning Floridians may not see the benefits of this approval for a long time.
The U.S. federal government has tried for years to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Is importing them from Canada the best this country can do?
Some Canadians are outraged because they fear that this could make their own shortages in supply and demand even worse.
Experts in the U.S. doubt that patients in Florida will see savings for medications for chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease anytime soon.
“The U.S. needs to solve its own drug pricing problem, and not rely on other countries to do it for them,” said Dr. Joel Lexchin, a professor emeritus at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto.
“It’s almost laughable that the U.S. thinks that they’re going to solve their problems about prices with Canadian drug supply, which is already stretched to the limit,” said Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a professor emerita of medical history and medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
The idea of buying prescription drugs in bulk from Canada has been around since 2019 when the Trump administration developed preliminary plans.
At least eight other states — Texas, Colorado, North Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Mexico — have passed similar laws, but many first need authorization from the FDA.
However, this is the first time that the FDA has allowed mass drug importation.
On Monday, the Biden administration appointed Stacy Sanders to become the first chief competition officer in the Department of Health and Human Services, with a priority of eliminating what it calls “corporate greed” in health care.
“This work just builds on the things that we are already doing,” Sanders said about the FDA’s move in an interview. “We’re going to continue to use any and all avenues as an agency to work to bring down prices and ramp up competition.”
According to Global News, a news outlet in Canada, Canadian Health Minister Mark Holland said at media conference in Nova Scotia on Wednesday that there is “no way Florida, or any other foreign jurisdiction, will be allowed to threaten Canada’s drug supply.”
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