CNBC ran a story yesterday headlined, “Florida wins first FDA approval to import cheaper drugs from Canada.”
With great fanfare in 2021, with media praising him as some kind of big-corporation-battling, pharma-defying revolutionary, Biden signed an executive order directing the FDA to work with states to allow importing the exact same drugs from Canada that are sold to Americans for ten times as much. Florida invested a huge amount of work “applying” with the FDA and now, three years later, the FDA has responded with a conditional approval.
It’s a Biden deal, which means don’t hold your breath.
Among a long, bizarre chain of restrictions, Florida must be the middleman. Americans are too dumb to order their own drugs from Canada. And before Florida may distribute any Canadian drugs, the Sunshine State must first send the FDA a mountain of detail on each and every drug it plans to import, to “ensure that those treatments are not counterfeit or ineffective.” Florida then has to “relabel those drugs to be consistent with FDA-approved labeling.”
Sounds like a lot of work.
There’s more. Once it starts, Florida has to submit quarterly reports to the FDA showing all the cost savings and reporting any potential safety issues, among another long list of required data. And after all that, the FDA’s approval only lets Florida import drugs for two years, and then the state must re-apply.
In other words, the FDA is making sure nobody can legally get cheap Canadian drugs. Or maybe I’m just being cynical again and the Biden plan will actually work great. Any betters out there?
