Standard Mischief

In what quite possibly may end up being my mantra, I’ll ask again. If Free Trade is good, isn’t it good for everyone, or is it only good when it directly benefits Corporations, LLC, and other types of corporate personhood thingys?

A few days ago, on May 8, the US Senate voted to add a “poison pill” amendment to a bill that would allow importation of drugs sold in other countries.

On a 49-40 vote, the Senate required the federal government to certify the safety and effectiveness of drugs before they can be imported, a requirement that health officials have said they cannot meet.

That’s a link to a story pulled off the AP. Unfortunately, they fail to explain further why the federal government can’t or won’t certify overseas drugs. The AP also fails because they don’t cite the name or bill number of the legislation.

My best guess is that it was S. 251, which – just for the record – comes in at a short 6,045 words.

If this is the proper bill, however, it does not have the text of the poison pill amendment. It’s been four days, Thomas.loc.gov is lagging.

The cited concerns, “safety” and “counterfeit” are pure FUD. I’m having a hard time understanding how the exact same drugs, frequently from the very same manufacturing facility, are somehow tainted just because the were packaged differently and then sold overseas. Are not the drugs available in “Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, South Africa, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway” safe and effecitve? Or is someone making the case that the rest of the world is getting scree swept up from the floor of the manufacturing facilities? Also, seeing as we already have a problem with counterfeit drugs in this county, cheaper prices perhaps would remove some of the incentive to counterfeit drugs because that would be less profit to be made. It seems that simple countermeasures such as verifiable lot numbers should be able to take care of the problem. Pfizer is also implementing color-shifting logos as an additional countermeasure.

No, this amendment is just about allowing big pharma to be able to sell drugs at one price in one market and another price in a different market. It uses the resources of our government to protect the current business model.