Today's Must-Read: Big PhRMA To the Rescue

Of the drug manufacturers, that is:

Allowing Americans to purchase lower-priced medicines from other countries would save the federal government alone more than $6 billion, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. The report comes as the pharmaceutical industry has ramped up its lobbying — including against a legislative initiative that would let Americans purchase lower-priced medicines from countries such as Canada.

Under existing law, drugmakers are permitted to produce pharmaceuticals abroad and then import them into the United States, where on average they charge Americans the highest prices for medicines in the world. However, while drugmakers themselves are allowed to import medicines, current law prohibits U.S. consumers and pharmaceutical wholesalers from doing so, even when the same medicines are sold at much lower prices abroad.

This is almost funny:

Critics, including writers at conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute, argue that importing drugs would also import foreign price controls that, they claim, would drastically cut the drug companies’ funds for research and development of future drugs.

Considering the number of drugs that have been researched and developed under grants from the NIH, I'm not quite buying that argument.

Read it -- it's a good take on just how corrupt the pharmaceutical industry is.