FDA Ban of Foreign Prescription Drugs

I firmly believe that the FDA ban of Foreign Prescription Drugs is wrong. After doing some additional research on this issue, I stumbled on a CATO institute transcript of Roger Pilon,vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, and his testimony before the Senate's Special Committee on Aging (I didn't even know we made this committee.) Two important points I want to quote from him are...

1. People are already breaking the law: "The reimportation debate is before us, of course, because in recent years, owing in part to the rise of the Internet, Americans in increasing numbers have discovered that the patented prescription drugs they're using cost considerably less abroad. But they've also learned that American law, except under limited circumstances, prohibits them from buying those lower priced drugs. Thus, they're pressing Congress to lift the ban in the hope of lowering their medical bills. But in the meantime, they and many state and local officials are simply ignoring the ban and purchasing drugs abroad."

2. An elimination of the ban on drug reimportation should be Congress' course of action: "Thus, if the reimportation ban were lifted, and market principles and practices were to take its place, it would not follow necessarily that domestic drug prices would drop or that the free-rider problem would abate. {I do, however, believe a free market system would decrease prices.} In a free market, sellers and buyers are free to strike whatever bargains they wish. Americans might thus continue to face high prices if foreigners were unwilling to resell their limited supplies to them. But as price differentials increase, incentives on both sides to breach the market barriers only grow, as we are seeing today, even with a statutory ban in place. Thus, in a world of large differentials, multiple vendors, and ready information, it's not likely that no-resale contracts and supply limits would long stanch the cross-border flow of drugs. Companies in that case would have no choice but to adjust prices, raising them abroad and/or lowering them here sufficiently to discourage parallel trading."

A better resource to consider is Pilon's actual original CATO study about eliminating the ban.