The true economic cost of pharmaceuticals---that is, the real resource cost to the economy of developing and producing them---cannot be reduced without improvements in the economic and regulatory environment, a broad set of issues outside the scope of today’s hearing. The importation of drugs subject to foreign price controls, far from reducing real economic costs, by necessity would import those price controls into the U.S. in terms of prices received by manufacturers. To the extent that lower prices for consumers result, that would not represent a true reduction in “costs”; instead it would be a wealth transfer from pharmaceutical producers and possibly from foreign consumers to U.S. consumers in the short run, with adverse consequences for U.S. consumers in long run, as discussed below. The more likely short run outcome for U.S. consumers, depending on market conditions, would be little or no price reductions but instead price increases for various market participants (intermediaries) in the supply chain, since the importation of price-controlled pharmaceuticals would not affect either market demand conditions or market supply conditions on the margin.