"Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

From: JRMadDog@aol.com
To: David_Vitter@vitter.senate.gov
Sent: 03/26/2010 13:23:51 Central Standard Time
Subj: "Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

Dear Senator Vitter,

Regarding the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act which would allow U.S. citizens to buy safe, FDA-approved drugs from Canada where medications are sold cheaper than they are in the U.S, I would like you to consider the following:

"... if you want Canadian pharmaceutical prices in the US, the steps you must follow are clear. You must cut your standard of living by 20-30%. You must reform your ludicrous product liability laws. And you must squeeze pharmaceutical industry profits through price controls and dominant purchaser policies, thus causing lower levels of pharmaceutical investment and innovation, getting cheaper prices for medicines already discovered at the cost of prolonged pain and suffering for victims of diseases we cannot yet cure or control. And you must restrict patient access to the latest and best medicines in order to keep costs low.

"I leave you with this final thought: suppose the difference in prices between Canada and the US is, as I’ve suggested, primarily market driven. Suppose also that the US government allows reimportation of drugs from Canada, eliminating market separation. In that case, prices in Canada can be expected to rise to US levels, with the result that Canadian consumers lose out and US consumers are no better off. In addition, drug companies are worse off since any price discrimination which occurred was profit maximizing. And those in need of pharmaceutical innovation (i.e. the sick and potentially sick) are worse off because the stream of future innovations will be reduced.

"Basically, everybody loses, or at the very least nobody wins."

Source: Why are Drugs Cheaper in Canada? A Revised Version of a Talk by AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley To the MPPI Conference “Drug Re-importation: Unintended Consequences” Portland, Maine, September 16th, 2004 http://www.aims.ca/library/MPPI_pharma-revised_.pdf

Regards,
J. R. Madden

7515 Sheringham Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70808-5762
225.769.0361 office-at-home
225.266.6196 mobile

John C. Andrews ...

Email from John Lorentz, Tue, 13 April 2010:

I know that you used to [get] together with John Andrews at many Worldcons over the years, and I didn't know if you had heard the news.

After a long illness, John passed away last Friday [09 April 2010]. He'd had a bad reaction to anaesthesia a few months ago, but in the end it was his muscular dystrophy that was the cause. He's going to be missed greatly by his friends here in Portland.

###

I consider John to be one of my dearest fannish friends as we met prior to the 1977 SunCon in Miami, Florida and stayed in touch especially at WorldCons until I stopped attending annually with MagiCon in 1992. We did see him at the Baltimore WorldCon in 1998.

We got a Christmas card from him every year with the ever-informative "John C. Andrews" signature added. That is, only his signature let us know he was alive as he wrote nothing else within the card.

I do know John will be missed in Portland and elsewhere as well.