Archive link. https://archive.is/N4Rqj
Some personal editorializing: This is a pretty remarkable first because of how captive we Americans are to pharma prices. Famously, when Medicare Part D was brought into existence by law it restricted the federal government from negotiating Part D drug prices. To me, shopping for drugs in Canada is tackling the symptom and ignores the cause. I wonder if this gets more traction with more states how it might affect drug prices in Canada, too.
The real solution to all this, of course, would be nationalize the healthcare industry in all aspects and to create a single payer healthcare system.
Hmm! Why would prescription drugs be cheaper in Canada? What could possibly be the difference between America and its northern neighbor, they’re both equally advanced and developed. Something just makes their drugs cheaper. Weird! 🫠
Don’t worry, our right-wing nutjobs are slowly chipping away at privatizing our health care system. Sooner or later we’ll probably reach parity. 🙄
If we sell our drugs to America on the cheap, we’ll probably end up buying them back at five times the price. Isn’t that how it works with our electricity and/or water?
It must be because Canada is part of the commonwealth 😏. If we had King Charles on our money who knows what great things might start happening.
Well yeah, when you subsidize something, it usually gets cheaper at the counter, since you’re paying for it with tax dollars instead.
People who need cheaper prescription drug prices aren’t paying a lot in taxes either.
Also, learn MMT. Taxes don’t pay for anything when you can print your own currency.
Perhaps, I don’t know much about Canadian taxes. I do know that, at least in Scandinavia, socialized medicine is largely funded by the middle class, not by the wealthy, whereas the US tax system is a lot heavier on the wealthy than the middle class or the poor.
But that’s not my point, my point is that US citizens buying Canadian drugs are benefiting from Canadian taxes. I’m not sure how that works in Florida here, I’m guessing Florida gets a worse deal than a citizen visiting Canada.
I do not care about the middle class. 🙄
The majority, the working class, need socialized medicine.
The middle class is defined as the middle income. For example, for Pew Research, it’s between 67-200% of the median income, so by definition, less than half are below and less than half are above.
So the middle class is part of either majority.
When the top 1% holds 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50% you can’t just define middle class as “middle income.” That’s a child’s understanding of class dynamics.
Middle class is literally that - the class between the working class and the ruling class. Managers, professionals, small business owners, etc. A middle income welder is still working class!
Nobody said there’s a clear separation between “working class” and “middle class,” and I think most people understand the upper end of the “working class” to be middle class or higher.
Middle class is, by definition, the people in the middle of the income scale. A middle income welder is middle class. There are managers below middle class (i.e. fast food managers probably make like $30-40k), and there are tradespeople who make more than middle class. Middle class is literally just the people who are between 67% and 200% of the median income.
The definition for “working class” is even more squishy, and it’s loosely defined as people without a college education (iffy Wikipedia article, claims it contains 30-35% of the population). There’s a lot of overlap with “lower middle class,” and it’s definitely not a “majority” by pretty much any “official” standard, though it’s often the biggest group (i.e. it’s a plurality). So you’ll have some overlap with income-based classes since “working class” is generally education-based instead of income-based.
The US tax system is not at all ‘heavy’ on the wealthy. The largest burden, proprtionally, falls on those with high earned incomes, doctors, lawyers, etc. these are the people who will be paying the higher marginal tax rates on substantial portions of their income.
The truly wealthy do not have high earned incomes, they acquire large assets and borrow against their value to pay for living expenses while avoiding taxes. This is the “buy, borrow, die” strategy, specifically designed to limit tax liability.
As a Canadian, I can’t see this not fucking over our own access to medication that we need, especially when our own governments are actively trying to dismantle what little socialised healthcare we have. It’s going to be like the Ozempic weight loss craze depriving diebetics of the drug, but for every drug. You’re one of the wealthiest states in the single wealthiest country in the world, surely you have the means to provide your own citizens with affordable medication, at least much more so than Canada with our tiny population density and comparatively low GDP. To put it not so politely, we shouldn’t be punished and forced to take on the burden of providing medication to you simply because you choose not to.
Look we’ve been trying, the private insurance companies aren’t budging. Single Payer is the goal, but we’re gonna need to not die in the meantime, so hand over the affordable insulin.
so hand over the affordable insulin.
Because Americans are somehow more deserving of not dying than Canadians? If a Canadian diabetic suddenly can’t afford Insulin because it’s all going to the US, that doesn’t matter to you? Should every country be obliged to pitch in to make sure the richest country in the world has enough resources to sustain itself even at the cost of their own citizens’ lives, then?
Also, if you recognize that you need Canada’s help to, quote, “not die,” maybe demanding we “hand it over” isn’t the best way sway attitudes about this over here.
You act like scarcity’s real, take it up with the 1% who create it artificially and stop victim blaming.
And while you’re gone, we’ll be using dat insulin, because I’m tired of reading about what a bright future this teenager had if only he had just a few million shillings more for this medicine that is pretty much not even slightly hard to obtain in literally every other country.
You act like scarcity’s real, take it up with the 1% who create it artificially and stop victim blaming.
And this does not apply to Americans too? What’s stopping Americans from taking it up with the 1% that artificially create scarcity for you then? And if you can’t, what makes you think we can? You think the Canadian 1% is somehow polite and apologetic compared to yours? You just stated that your 1% won’t budge when you tried to change them, yet your apparent solution is for us to do the same thing which didn’t work in your country?
You tell me to stop victim blaming yet you seem to have no sympathy for how this will affect average Canadians, who are as powerless to do anything about this as average Americans. We’re not some bastion of socilaized healthcare, in fact we’re considered low tier in terms of the extent of socialized healthcare we have compared to the rest of the world. Canada is as capitalist as the US so this will negatively affect our (the average Canadian’s) access to life saving drugs. If you’re so against victim blaming then why are you blaming us for being bothered by this when we didn’t create the problem and are also victims of the same thing? You rightly make it clear you won’t accept this, so why should we?
To be clear, I hate the fact that the average American doesn’t have access to medication as much as you do. I don’t personally blame any individual American, you or anyone else, for buying drugs from Canada, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with the broader concept as a whole, I should have made that more clear and I apologize for not doing that. The solution should be improving the US’s healthcare system and not leeching off Canada’s, and again, it’s not like there’s a lack of resources to do that in the richest country in the world, you’re the furthest thing from a developing country. If you said that we should work together to implement non profit-motivated healthcare for both the US and Canada and beyond, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. Maybe that’s what you meant, but the way I interpreted it is that you feel entitled to our (somewhat) affordable medication just because we have it and you don’t, and we should simply take a share in your problem to lessen it for you while making it worse for us, instead of actively working to make yours or everyone’s more affordable.
America doing imperialism!? :shocked-pikachu:
Seriously though, the further capitalism plunges into crisis, the more the burger empire will look to its allies in the periphery to exploit. It’s already happening in Europe.
I have zero interest nationalizing the industry. Just the healthcare portion like other countries. Maybe that is the first step though, create a national drug plan. It’s stupid what insurance covers or doesn’t cover. I take a daily medication. Twice a day cost me ten dollars a month. If I was the ER, once a day; it’s 250 dollars and I have amazing health insurance.
I disagree with nationalizing any of it. Instead, we should have some important reforms:
- reduce patent duration - this is the major hurdle in generics replacing name brand, which keeps prices high
- transparent care costs - journalists and individuals can’t easily compare routine/planned costs because prices are only known with a quote (very hard to get), and there’s usually no guarantee that the price is good
- ambulance prices are ridiculous, and it’s not something you can easily opt out of - I think these should be 100% publicly funded, provided the paramedics recommend the ambulance (you could choose to pay for it yourself if they don’t)
- simplify insurance - ideally make it more similar to auto insurance, as in you get coverage after some deductible, no networks or other nonsense (you pick your caregivers, procedures, etc); you could pick a more comprehensive plan if you know you’ll have more fixed costs
- reduce restrictions on medications - e.g. with insulin, the US only allows the more expensive options, which have replaced less expensive options (they were a little less effective, but still solved the problem, and way cheaper)
I personally don’t trust our government to put together a decent healthcare system. The one we have is heavily regulated, with lots of cronyism to ensure things stay expensive. A national program just makes it a political problem, I want it to be transparent so that public can vet it. We can have government health care systems (e.g. Medicare), but the focus should be on making the system more transparent and auditable, not just hide the problem in the tax system.
Florida no!
Wait… wait, no this is a good thing, sorry, force of habit. Carry on
So, we’ve just been doing this illegally all these years?
Who’s that mobster down there? Desantis? Ain’t that his name? Yeah. That’s it. What’s his cut going to be?
His cut from what? Canada?
