"Buying Pharmaceuticals (Drugs) Online...." Topic

Is this practice legal? Are the prescriptions legal? If not, who is breaking the law, guy who buys or sells??? Thanks.

Do you have a doctor's prescription? You can get it filled at the pharmacy of your choice. If you are talking about getting drugs from another country check with the laws of your state or country. We order our mom's Alzheimer's drugs from Canada. They are exactly the same drug, just as safe, but at a much lower price.

Gotcha! Just red some stuff put out by the DEA to scare people from buying drugs overseas. Most likely they are just speaking on the side of the government who are in USA drug companies' pockets.

If you are buying within the US and it doesn't require a prescription, it's ok. If it does and you have a prescription, it's ok.

It's illegal to bring large quantities of medication across the border that is already available in the US (for example, buying common arthritis drugs mail/internet order from a canadian pharmacy) prescription or not. However, folks who live in border states are allowed to bring back a 1 month supply if they personally visit the other country. In the mail order case, there is little or no enforcement. You face a very small chance of being caught by Customs, in which case they notify you they are refusing the order, and your friendly canadian pharmacy re-ships your stuff. I suspect if they catch your marijuana, cocaine, or meth they will do more than send a letter.

If you buy it from out of the country, technically you are the one in trouble. How are they going to prosecute foreign nationals across the border for something that is legal there?

And you are right about the drug companies. They have exerted huge influence in Washington to keep drug prices high and prevent Americans from buying from cheaper foreign sources.

What's ironic is that "cheaper foreign source" sells exactly the same med, from exactly the same manufacturer.

As long as you are getting brand name meds. Some of the generics that are made overseas, like in India, can be a little iffy. I've had generics that were definitely not the same.

By US federal law importing prescriptions from another country by mail is illegal.

If you are buying from a domestic mail order pharmacy with a prescription from a licensed physician (in most states a physician's assistant or nurse practitioner also may prescribe) who has actually examined you then it is legal, with some variation in state laws.

Mark

A lot of other countries require the drug companies to sell for a lower price. This is why you can get them cheaper there. Eventually, if enough people do this, the price will come down in the US too and then no one will be able to afford the research and development of new drugs.

A lot of other countries require the drug companies to sell for a lower price. This is why you can get them cheaper there. Eventually, if enough people do this, the price will come down in the US too and then no one will be able to afford the research and development of new drugs

Didn't know Pictors worked for the USA Pharmaceutical industry because you are reading dirctly from their script. If you believe that story, I have a bridge I want to sell you. Lol…

I know this is coming from a guy who has health insurance. ;)

I used to work in pharmaceutical research for the pharmaceutical company. I know how much it costs. This is coming from a self employed guy that pays for his own medicine and his own health insurance.

I didn't know you worked as a CPA doing the books for the pharmaceutical industry.

I work for a drug company.

When other countries, like Canada, demand lower prices (while protecting their own generic manufacturers BTW. Canadians pay more for generics than we do), the company sells them only enough to meet that country's projected needs. Yet these online pharmacys have unlimited supplies. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I wonder where all those drugs come from.

Do what you like, but do so with your eyes open.

I didn't know you worked as a CPA doing the books for the pharmaceutical industry.

One of my many secrets. ;)

Basically what you guys are saying customers and that drug research is so costly that the USA as a nation needs to pay exhorbitant prices if we wish to continue to discover new drugs and save lives. Drug companies are altruistic and look to improve the health of the nation as their primary goal. They only charge to fund more research for the good of humaity so as to cure disease. I am strting to get this now. See I can learn after all.

Wow! This is a hard pill to swallow for a cynic such as myself.

Since I am not an expert, I guess I will go along with you and change my opinion.

Long live expensive medication!!!

Drug companies goals are the same as any other companies goals, to make money. If they can't make money they go out of business. Drug research is expensive, therefore it requires a lot of money to fund that research, money that they need to make back quickly.

I did preclinical testing for Monsanto. Our budget was about 3 million dollars a year, no one I worked with made more than $100,000 a year, most of us made less than $30,000. Most of the money went to buy things like fluorescent labeled antibodies for cell staining and sorting, to pay for the care and purchase of the monkeys and for expensive equipment like flow cytometers.

It is wise of you to change your opinion, now you have some facts you can use to try to change other people's opinions who were as ignorant as you were.

Pictor's,

I may recognize that you have experience in the industry but you are not seeing the big picture.

Drug companies spend an average of $10,000 to $15,000 in marketing per physician per year. They offer doctors office catering, lavish dinners and even free cruises. It has been shown that the factor with the most influence on doctors' prescribing practice is visits from pharmaceutical representatives. Drug companies fund studies and pay physicians to give talks at conferences, and spend more than twice as much on advertising and marketing as on research. (Family Therapy Network, March 2000 and gayhealth.com)

Or this:

WASHINGTON, DC – In the wake of news that Pfizer's second quarter profits more than doubled due in part to cost-cutting measures, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today renewed his investigation of pharmaceutical outsourcing and its effect on drug safety. Brown, who has already called on Pfizer to explain the safety implications of its outsourcing practice, today sent a letter to Merck asking for further information on its heavy reliance on global outsourcing for the manufacture of pharmaceutical ingredients and finished products.

The Democratic "Truth Squad" of progressive House Democrats has released a report showing that pharmaceutical industry profits have skyrocketed since the Republican Medicare drug plan went into effect at the beginning of this year.

The study found that the ten largest drug companies made over $8 USD billion more in the first half of 2006 than in 2005 – a total increase of 27%. The biggest gainer, Pfizer, gained 73% in sales from last year by raking in more than $6.5 USD billion through June.

The Truth Squad blamed much of the gouging on the gag imposed by the new law prohibiting Medicare from negotiating for lower prices, a practice used successfully by the Veteran's Administration and in Canada. Other profiteering comes from 6.1 million "dual-eligible" beneficiaries who used to obtain coverage through Medicaid, which drug companies must sell to at their lowest prices, but now must get medication from Medicare, which imposes no such controls.

"The Republican Congress passed a Medicare drug bill that put the interests of the drug companies first and seniors last," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman. "The program is a multi-billion dollar giveaway to the drug companies."

"Clearly, the Medicare prescription drug plan has been very kind to the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, it has not been as kind to America's seniors," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza.

Pictors I think you should rethink your position. I can site hundreds of reports from reliable sources that drug companies make huge profits. The same medication in Canada and Mexico is half the price and it's from the same manufacturer not generic syuff from unknown. You are way off on this issue.

Base on you philosophy the oil companies are struggling as well and we should bail them out? Hm…

Yes, drug companies, just like every other business, need to advertise.

The drugs are required to be sold at a certain price in Canada, I don't know about mexico, but it seems that they might lower prices so that they can sell more there. The research costs a lot of money and that money needs to come from somewhere.

The fact that they would sell in these countries and make some money vs. not making any money there at all doesn't make the cost of research go away.

They do make huge profits and they should make huge profits, they have risked a lot of capital on making these drugs.

If you think it is so easy to make huge profits start your own pharmaceutical company. People do it all the time.

I also worked in scale up for pharmaceutical production. We would have reactor runs that would get contaminated and cost $5-10,000 for no product in the end. These were due to some sort of error (sometimes human error, sometimes a pump stopped at precisely the wrong moment) but they were still cost that needed to be recovered.

"Base (sic) on you (sic) philosophy the oil companies are struggling as well and we should bail them out? Hm"

The pharmaceutical companies are not asking to be bailed out, they are asking to be allowed to charge a fair price for their product, or what they think is a fair price.

Should the government be allowed to determine what a company sells it's wares at?

Based on your philosophy should GW be forced to sell figures at $1 USD each because we want them to?

The pharmaceutical companies are not asking to be bailed out, they are asking to be allowed to charge a fair price for their product, or what they think is a fair price.

Should the government be allowed to determine what a company sells it's wares at?

Based on your philosophy should GW be forced to sell figures at $1 USD USD each because we want them to?

Can't believe we are still having this discussion. I am not saying drug companies don't have expenses. Every business has expenses.

Drug companies claim the high prices are necessary to fund ongoing research and development. Yet, many of the manufacturers' development efforts are not for new drugs, but for copies of existing medications, to keep patents fresh and patient costs high by preventing generics from hitting the market.

Prescription drug spending in 2005 was $200.7 USD billion, five times the $40.3 USD billion spent in 1990. Yet, U.S. population growth between 1994 and 2005 was only 9 percent.

While drug costs skyrocketed, CEOs at the seven pharmaceutical companies with the highest revenues made over $142 USD million in 2005.

Your analogy using miniatures doesn't really convince me much since I don't need miniatures to keep my heart beating. If I did, I would answer YES to your question.

I think that it is government acting on behalf of the people that has the obligation to protect the common good by assuring that drugs are safe and affordable. That has never really truly been done in our society.

The research that the FDA requires is done not by the FDA but by third parties and they show quick result that don't allow for long term research of drugs that can detect their side-effects properly. Due to this we get drugs like Vioxx which makes you back pain go away but gives you a stroke.

I can't believe we are having this discussion either.

"The research that the FDA requires is done not by the FDA but by third parties and they show quick result that don't allow for long term research of drugs that can detect their side-effects properly."

I did some of that third party research, it is paid for by the drug companies. We rejected a lot of drugs that didn't work, as a matter of fact, in the two years I was there we didn't find one chemical that was turned into a commercially viable drug. That was two years at $3 USD million a year.

"Due to this we get drugs like Vioxx which makes you back pain go away but gives you a stroke."

Despite all of this testing there are still something that will be missed with the research and that will only be discovered once the drugs hit the larger testing ground of the open market. This is unfortunate but inevitable.

Food sometimes has negative, and unforeseen, side effects on some people as well, you know.

"Prescription drug spending in 2005 was $200.7 USD USD billion, five times the $40.3 USD USD billion spent in 1990. Yet, U.S. population growth between 1994 and 2005 was only 9 percent."

And the drugs now are better than the drugs in 1990. Five times better? I'm not sure but somethings didn't even exist in 1990 that exist now. Diet and exercise can't even come close to competing with Lipitor for lowering cholesterol.

"Yet, many of the manufacturers' development efforts are not for new drugs, but for copies of existing medications, to keep patents fresh and patient costs high by preventing generics from hitting the market."

This statement from your article is just straight up false. Most of the new "copies" of drugs improve the drugs in some way. Or change their function so that they can be used for different things.

Let's look at some examples of where this has happened since you don't seem to understand these concepts to much depth.

Vasopressin is a drug used for the maintenance of urine production, among other things. It has a short half life of about 10 minutes and can be given IV, SC or IN.

Desmopressin does essentially the same thing, except it is a V2 selective analog of Vasopressin so does not produce vasoconstriction. It has a longer half life so that it won't reach a steady state as quickly and takes longer to eliminate given if given at regular dosage intervals.

The two drugs produce similar effects but are not exactly the same. If you don't want vasoconstriction to occur then you would use Desmopressin, if that is not a concern you might use Vasopressin or Desmopressin depending on other factors.

Similarly there are a ton of diabetes drugs.

Here are a few:

Insulin Lispro
Regular Insulin
Lente Insulin
NPH Insulin
Ultralente Insulin
Insulin Glargine

Regular Insulin is fast acting, it works in about 30 minutes from SC injection, but it can also be administered through an IV.

Insulin Lispro is ultra fast acting and can take effect within 5-15 minutes. It can be administered IV but is no more quick acting if done this way and is more expensive than Regular Insulin so this is generally not done.

So then there is NPH Insulin and Lente Insulin both of which are longer acting so they stick around longer and do not need to be taken at meal times. Since they are in a thick solution they are not suitable for IV administration and they are not usable in emergency situations.

Even more slow acting and longer lasting are Insulin Glargine and Insulin detemir. The former was introduced in 2000 the later in 2005.

Three different drugs that were developed over a long period of time and at the cost of millions of dollars.

Government does not have an obligation to provide food for it's people and it certainly doesn't have the obligation to provide medicine for it's people. Saying that these things are the case are tantamount to encouraging slavery or at least a form of slavery.

What if the pharmaceutical companies or farmers don't want to sell their wares for affordable prices? Does the government go in and force them to do so at gun point? Apparently according to you. Ultimately that is what it would come down to were it a law if both sides stuck it out to the extreme.

So you have forced those people to work for a wage that they don't accept as being fair for their investment of time or risk of capital. And what if they go out of business because they don't accept your limits?

Then you don't have any drugs any more.

Sure that is an extreme case, probably others would come along to pick up the slack, maybe the government would jump in and start drug companies themselves. We could have all the drug research and development that came out of the Soviet Union and that is coming out of China.

If you want to see what happens to a pharmaceutical industry when government gets involved in setting prices, look to Europe. There are very few firms left over there, and it isn't for lack of talent. You can have first rate health care or you can have inexpensive health care, but you can't have both for very long – and paying for it indirectly through taxes doesn't make it less expensive. This has always been the case, but as us baby boomers age and become the dominant demographic in this country, the costs of a level of health care unknown to our parents becomes the monster that ate the budget. We can give up those advances and die younger like our parents, take over the industry and make drugs for free (hmmm, didn't see any pharmaceutical firms east of the Berlin Wall) or continue on as we are, with consumers and manufacturers and government locked in a constant struggle.

Streitax bring up an important point that I missed in that quote about drugs costing five times as much.

The baby boomers are the dominant force in health care these days. In 1990 the baby boomers were only 45 at the oldest. Now the oldest baby boomers are in their early 60s. The cost for their health care was probably minimal in their 40s but in their 50s and 60s it has increased dramatically.

Good point Streitax!

Pictors,

You need to see the big picture. I will help. The following is especially for you. Does the following argument sound familiar??? Yes, it does! Because it the argument the drug companies have used and you have adopted it.

In the past two years, we have started to see, for the first time, the beginnings of public resistance to rapacious pricing and other dubious practices of the pharmaceutical industry. It is mainly because of this resistance that drug companies are now blanketing us with public relations messages. And the magic words, repeated over and over like an incantation, are research, innovation, and American. Research. Innovation. American. It makes a great story.

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Too bad they don't mention CEO salaries, in the 7 figures! Ouch! I couldn't believe some of their salaries!!!
Top three CEO's made a combined 59,000,000!!!!

What they seem to enjoy is taxpayer funded research. The they manupulate older drugs composition to re-establish the patents and a monopoly on the medication to continue to rip us off.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it,

If I'm a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?[4]

This to your argument that it isn't governments place to protect the welfare of its citizens. Government needs to stop acting to protect the legal drug cartels and start taking care of poor and elderly that can't afford these drugs.

Third, the industry is hardly a model of American free enterprise. To be sure, it is free to decide which drugs to develop (me-too drugs instead of innovative ones, for instance), and it is free to price them as high as the traffic will bear, but it is utterly dependent on government-granted monopolies—in the form of patents and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved exclusive marketing rights. If it is not particularly innovative in discovering new drugs, it is highly innovative— and aggressive—in dreaming up ways to extend its monopoly rights.

The worst part is that the same drug from the same company uses our nation to take us for all we have because it is an acceptable practice and they can get away with it thanks to Laissez faire behavior of our politicians in regard to these companies which buy their votes through Washington brokers.

there is nothing peculiarly American about this industry. It is the very essence of a global enterprise. Roughly half of the largest drug companies are based in Europe. (The exact count shifts because of mergers.) In 2002, the top ten were the American companies Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Wyeth (formerly American Home Products); the British companies GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca; the Swiss companies Novartis and Roche; and the French company Aventis (which in 2004 merged with another French company, Sanafi Synthelabo, putting it in third place).[5] All are much alike in their operations. All price their drugs much higher here than in other markets.

You and whoever wrote those articles, needs to look up the definition of monopoly first of all.

Second the ability to produce drugs that are taken weekly instead of daily is a huge concern for the usefulness of drugs.

The work I did for monsanto was all about having a drug that could be administered once. It didn't do anything different it was just administered once instead of daily or every other day.

This is important and not lightly dismissed. Patient compliance is one of the biggest reasons why medical treatments fail. If you can get a drug that can be given once then you don't need to worry about compliance. You don't have to worry about them not taking their pill and on and on.

It is not a little thing, it is innovative and it helps people live longer.

"The they manupulate older drugs composition to re-establish the patents and a monopoly on the medication to continue to rip us off."

So this, in addition to being grammatically poor, is also factually incorrect.

No one is being ripped off. You don't want the treatment don't buy it, make your own pharmaceutical company that will make it better and cheaper. Sure pharmaceutical companies, big ones, come along and buy up smaller ones as it is easier than developing their own stuff, but they even take a risk in that. The price will be higher if the drug is approved vs. just in the testing phase.

Also many times if you are low income many drugs are given to you for free if you can prove you can't afford them by the drug companies. Pfizer does this for one.

So that pretty much puts the boots to your argument about them being too expensive for the poor. If the elderly are not also poor then they can buy their own damn drugs and give up cable tv or the vacation home in Florida.

make your own pharmaceutical company that will make it better and cheaper.

You have to know this is not a realistic solution for 99% of the people who can't afford their medication.

Also many times if you are low income many drugs are given to you for free if you can prove you can't afford them by the drug companies. Pfizer does this for one.

I'm not 'low income'. I don't qualify for these plans. I've been refused insurance. I could buy a car every year for what I spend on pills. My choice is to buy from cheaper sources or to give up some of the medication and allow this crippling disease to take over my life. I've already forgone one prescription because of the cost. I don't give a fig if some multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical loses money. I'm not doing it because I want extra money to spend at the mall. My concerns are a little more personal and immediate. I want the pain to go away. I want to be able to use my hands.

Your wants do not oblige others to work for less money than they want to make. They do not owe you something because they have made it and it would help you.

Not to sound harsh, but if you made something that someone else wanted do you think the government should make you sell it to them for less than your asking price?

And I also know that at least 90% of the people in the United States have the ability to start up a pharmaceutical company if they put their mind to it.