FDA opposes Senate drug importation amendment offered to healthcare bill

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: The Hill

A proposal to enable the importation of cheaper prescription drugs could endanger the U.S. medicine supply and would be difficult to implement, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday

These criticisms from Margaret Hamburg, President Barack Obama’s FDA commissioner, could prove damaging to an effort by a broad coalition to enact the longstanding goal of easing consumers’ access to prescription drugs from countries such as Canada, where the prices are generally lower than in the United States.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) introduced his amendment to the healthcare bill on Tuesday with the support of 19 other senators, including four Republicans, setting up a vote Wednesday.

“U.S. consumers are charged the highest prices in the world for FDA-approved prescription drugs, and that’s just not fair,” Dorgan said in a statement.

But the Obama administration’s declaration on the eve of the vote could derail the amendment despite the fact that Obama co-sponsored Dorgan’s drug imports bill while a member of the Senate and that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was a vocal proponent of the House version of the bill when he served as a member of the lower chamber.


Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/71307-fda-opposes-senate-drug-importation-amendmen

[jwirr]

1. Where do we get our drugs from now? If I am not mistaken many of

them are made overseas or off shore. What is the difference?

[grahamhgreen]

8. You are correct - it's complete BS. Many drugs are already manufactured overseas.

[uberblonde]

14. Not only are they made abroad....

Any plants manufacturing drugs to be sold in the U.S. HAVE TO BE INSPECTED BY THE FDA.

[jwirr]

21. So that is the problem more than where they come from?

[unabelladonna]

2. many generics aren't manufactured in the US.....

so the only reason i can think of to oppose the measure is it would be less expensive to the consumer.

[laughingliberal]

3. And the White House deal with Big Phama...have to protect that nt

[dflprincess]

13. Ding! Ding! Ding!

We have a winner!

[FailureToCommunicate]

4. The EPA is there to protect us (remember Thalidomide?) It's the drug companies,

not the EPA, that set the high prices we pay in the US.

[WriteDown]

6. Thought the FDA was for that....

:shrug:

[Sgent]

22. Thalidomide was a huge success

of the US regulatory system. It was never approved for use in the US like in most western countries.

On a side note it IS approved today, but that happened relatively recently and is for the treatment of leprosy.

[WriteDown]

5. This is a new achievement in duplicity!!!

"But the Obama administration’s declaration on the eve of the vote could derail the amendment despite the fact that Obama co-sponsored Dorgan’s drug imports bill..."

[BumRushDaShow]

7. What kind of reporting is this?

"But the Obama administration’s declaration on the eve of the vote could derail the amendment"

And how exactly is this magical administration supposed to "derail" an amendment on one version of a bill that still has a long way to go (and will eventually still need to be merged into a House bill), where it is fashioned and voted on by a different branch of gov't? I doubt this would be something that generates a veto. :eyes:

[pattmarty]

9. My wife and I have been getting different drugs from Canada..............

................for 10 yrs. Tim Pawlenty, Republican Gov of Mn, says "show me all the dead Canadians". I don't care for Pawlenty, but it's a good, accurate quote. We probably have saved 2-3 thousand dollars over the years AND we don't have any of the real high priced drugs. Plus, these drugs are produced all over the fucking world, the only thing "special" about the US is that they totally let their citizens get fucked/raped by the drug companies based here.

[brentspeak]

10. Translation: Obama's FDA is as much in Big Pharma's pocket as Bush's was

[villager]

11. what? Not "changey" enough!?

n/t

[Thickasabrick]

17. If anyone does not see Rahm/Obama's power play in this - I've got

some swamp land for sale.

The big question is - just what was promised to Big Pharma and how can we get around it.

[dhpgetsit]

12. I suspect the FDA is a wholly owned subsidiary

of Big Pharma and Big Ag.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rollingrock]

20. That's one way of putting it

MSNBC: FDA drug panels rife with conflicts of interest
Study finds money influences federal experts' decisions on medications

Asociated Press

...Nearly one in three experts relied on by the Food and Drug Administration for advice on drugs, including whether to approve new pharmaceuticals, has a financial conflict, according to a Public Citizen study that is to appear Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Just 1 percent of panelists were excluded because of those conflicts, which can include tens of thousands of dollars in corporate grants, contracts and consulting fees.

In September 2001, Public Citizen, a private group, had threatened to sue the FDA to force greater disclosure of conflicts of interest among panel members. In January 2002, the FDA issued disclosure guidelines that panelists now must follow.


...Conflicts of interest widespread

The JAMA study underscored how pervasive the conflicts are: In 73 percent of drug advisory committee meetings, at least one panelist reported a financial conflict of interest.

Dr. Karl Kieburtz, chair of the FDA’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System advisory committee, said conflicts of interest can modify behavior in both conscious and unconscious ways.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12483353/

[Puppyjive]

15. Tax every pharma commercial every time it airs

We eat imported food every day. I wonder if this has endangered the US food supply chain? Many of our drugs are made from plants that grow in foreign countries. I guess it means that the pharmaceutical companies will have to stop using plants from foreign countries because they might endanger of US drug supply. Or maybe the US pharmaceutical companies have more lobbyists than the US grocers. Maybe we do have a corrupt government.

[Bluesbreaker]

18. Here we go again

The New Obama once more sides with the corporate interests, in this case his new-found friends at PHARMA, over the welfare of the American people. Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, everybody else in the Fortune 500 . . . is there any member of the corporatocracy for whom he won't throw the middle class overboard?

[Iowa]

19. Yep... the worst Democratic president in history.