Shutterstock
Have you read the stories of people crossing the border into Canada to get cheaper medication?
Senator Bernie Sanders, a potential Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential election, told a story during a debate recently about how he took 15 Americans across the border to buy cheaper insulin.
Now with elections looming and pressure on the rise, President Trump announced this week a plan to allow the fully legal import of expensive prescription medications from Canada, giving consumers more options for how they purchase their drugs.
Don’t get too excited, this isn’t a done deal yet. This plan is in the early stages of development, and one congress member said we won’t see any major proposals for it before September of this year.
After going through numerous levels of government approval, it would still fall on states to work with the FDA and Canadian drug manufacturers to provide testing and approval on the imported drugs.
Trump promised in his 2016 campaign run that he would work with pharmaceutical companies and the government to reduce the cost of medications and medical treatment for Americans suffering.
This seems to be what a major part of his platform for the 2020 election will be. It’s a hot topic, too – quite a bit of time was dedicated to healthcare reform in the Democratic debate that happened earlier this week.
Similar propositions have been proposed and struck down numerous times before now, so it’s unclear if this will actually gain traction. Alex Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, called the idea a “gimmick” in May of 2018 but is now in support of it only a year later.
