Iowa's Prescription for Low Cost Medicine

Currently, there are only four U.S. states that openly encourage their
citizens to buy prescription drugs from Canada: Kansas, Illinois,
Missouri, and Wisconsin. Iowa is not on the list, but I believe that it
should be.



In the
recent presidential election, we heard Bush use one of his
many scare tactics saying that if we are going to import drugs from
Canada, he wants to make sure “it cures you, and doesn’t kill you.” He
said his worry is that a drug might “look like it’s from Canada but it
might be from a third world.”



While
that’s a very good scare tactic, and undoubtedly worked very well in
his campaign, it is, like many of his scare tactics, not based on
any sort of fact.



Predictably,
the prescription drug companies have only added to the fear with full
page ads like the one shown here. One way to get people to stop getting
their drugs from Canada would be to tell them they are from a third
world country, schemes the pharmaceutical companies.



According
to a recent Day to Day news story aired on NPR on December 7, the
opposite is true. Most of the drugs that Americans buy from Canada are
actually made in the United States, exported to Canada, and then get
re-imported back to the United States.



Canadians
are baffled by our ignorance, and offended by the suggestion that their
pharmacies aren’t safe and that it is some sort of prescription drug
grab bag free for all. Their government regulates the quality and the
price of their prescription drugs. We, on the other hand, turn our
government over to the pharmaceutical companies, letting them write our
laws and set our policies, all at our own expense. Oddly enough, our
high drug prices—which seniors cannot afford—are effectively
subsidizing the low-cost prescriptions that Canadians enjoy.



Iowa is
in the top five in the percentage of its elderly population. Since the
federal government has failed its people on this issue, the state of
Iowa has a moral obligation to meet the needs of Iowans who cannot
afford the drugs that are prescribed to them. It is time for the state
of Iowa to join our neighbors and make lower cost, prescription drugs
from Canada readily accessible to our seniors.