So Illinois will be creating a state program to get Canadian-priced drugs to its citizens. Again , we’re willing to support another country’s single-payer system, but not one at home. Again, we’re willing to send our state tax dollars across the border, into Canadian pharmacies, instead of keeping our dollars here. (Aside: who wants to take bets on when some big drug scare occurs from a tampered medication coming from Canada? I wouldn’t put it past PhRMA to sabotage a few cases of a diabetes med to scare the public into buying American .)

Matthew Holt points out the obvious buying power hypocrisy :

bq. IPI’s latest press-release claims that prices in Canada ought to be 82% of the US level but in fact they’re only 59%. So they think of course that Canadians should voluntarily increase their payments by some 35%. I assume the IPI also thinks that WalMart should start paying its suppliers a ton more every year, or is using your purchasing power only OK if you’re in the private sector? For that matter I don’t think WalMart lets its suppliers get away without innovating, but they certainly don’t let them raise prices to do it!

We could easily have cheaper drugs in this country, if the government was allowed to use its purchasing power, just like Wal-Mart has done. But the new Medicare legislation strictly forbids this. Even if you *want* the government to run more like a business, its own laws (written by pharma interests) prevent it from doing so.

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