SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ----------------------
SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (5.9 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) Subject contains lots of white space
SPAM: Hit! (0.2 points) BODY: Contains at least 3 dollar signs in a row
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) Received via an IP in dynablock.njabl.org
SPAM: [RBL check: found 72.1.88.138.dynablock.njabl.org.]
SPAM: Hit! (0.4 points) Received via a relay in dnsbl.njabl.org
SPAM: [RBL check: found 72.1.88.138.dnsbl.njabl.org.]
SPAM: Hit! (0.6 points) DNSBL: sender ip address in in a dialup block
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) DNSBL: Received via an IP in dynablock.njabl.org
SPAM:
SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results ---------------------
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Conservative group says Internet drug
reimportation = higher $$$
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:20:29 -0500
From: Thomas A Giovanetti <tomg@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
Declan,
If you're interested:
We are very sympathetic with free-trade/no gov't intervention arguments,
and we rarely disagree with friends like the Cato Institute. We're also
not unsympathetic of the presumed benefits to consumers of prescription
drugs should large-scale reimportation become legal. However, in the
case of prescription drugs (and perhaps other intellectual property
products), things are different. Let me try to explain why.
The assumption behind the free-trade proponents of reimportation is that
drug companies are in a strong negotiating position with national
governments. You stated as much in your comments ("reimportation will
eventually make drug companies (on the margin) seek to avoid selling in
the Canadian market unless they can raise prices to
something closer to the U.S. market"). The problem is, drug companes are
NOT in a strong negotiating position, for two reasons: 1) humanitarian
impulses and pressures would not allow a drug company to refuse to sell
to country X unless they get the price they want; but even more
significant is 2) compulsory licensing. If a country doesn't like the
price it is getting from a drug company, the country can legally
threaten to compulsory license the drug, which means they can legally
take the patent away and begin manufacturing the drug themselves.
Compulsory licensing is a powerful tool in the hands of a country that
would very much like to jumpstart its domestic pharmaceutical industry
by taking a patent away from its owner, licensing one or more of its own
manufacturers to begin stamping out those pills, and then exporting them
BACK INTO THE LUCRATIVE US MARKET.
So what you have is a bunch of countries who would like nothing more
than to have an excuse to file for compulsory licensing in order to hand
over valuable patents to their domestic manufacturers. This gives
countries every advantage in negotiations with drug companies, and
leaves the drug companies basically bent over the table everywhere
except in the U.S., where there remains something vaguely resembling a
true market in prescription drugs.
So the int'l prescription drug market is like a balloon that is being
squeezed from every direction except one, so it bulges in the direction
of the U.S. But if you start squeezing the balloon from that direction
as well, the balloon pops. The U.S. is the pressure relief valve, and if
you plug IT up, things blow up. Drug companies would then NOWHERE be
able to recoup the profits they need to continue the current level of
R&D investment, and the net result will be fewer new drugs available to
anyone, including those who need them most in developing nations.
That's why allowing large-scale reimportation of prescription drugs into
the U.S. is bad economic policy, to say nothing of increased threats to
health and welfare, which I have not addressed in this email.
_____
Tom Giovanetti
President
Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI)
http://www.ipi.org
tomg@private
The information contained in this communication may be confidential, is
intended only for the use of the recipient named above, and may be
legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended
recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution,
or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is strictly
prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please
re-send this communication to the sender and delete the original message
and any copy of it from your computer system.
_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Sep 21 2004 - 22:40:17 PDT