Faced with Unaffordable Drug Prices, Tens of Millions Buy Medicine Outside U.S. Rachel Bluth - Kaiser Health News
go to original December 27, 2016

A discount pharmacy in Nogales, in the state of Sonora, Mexico (Flickr/J. Stephen Conn)

As drug prices have spiraled upward in the past decade, tens of millions of generally law-abiding Americans have committed an illegal act in response: They have bought prescriptions outside the U.S. and imported them.

It’s no secret that some Americans regularly buy prescription drugs on the Internet or while traveling abroad. But the popularity of the approach is underscored by the results of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in November.

Eight percent of respondents said they or someone in their household had imported a drug at some point, a figure that would translate to about 19 million adults in the U.S. based on current Census population estimates.

Listen: Many Americans Travel to Other Countries for Medical Care (VOA News)

Even the proportion found in the poll may be low, said Andrew Zullo, a clinical pharmacist and a doctoral student at the Brown University School of Public Health who has researched the subject. “People are uncomfortable talking about the cost of their own health care, and they don’t want to admit they are struggling to pay for their own meds,” he said. Some may also be reluctant to reveal they’ve broken the law.

Still, 8% is far higher than in surveys conducted by government interviewers, which suggested the number was about 2% in 2011 – though the government survey focused only on purchases in the previous 12 months. The Kaiser poll queried a nationally representative sample of 1,202 adults.

The internet has made it easier for Americans to buy prescription drugs abroad, frequently from disreputable sources, according to Jaime Ruiz, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned that many online pharmacies aren’t what they seem to be. An international crackdown in 2014 found that many packages of medicines purportedly from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. contained drugs from other countries, including India, China, and Laos.

Read the rest at The Rivard Report

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