Nobel laureate Dr. Milton Friedman and Other Experts Debate Drug Importation, Medicare, Uninsured, Single-Payer Health Care, and More

SAN FRANCISCO – January 27, 2004 - Today experts will debate the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, a practice just recently supported by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. Legislation is now in the works in California, and cities and states around the country are on the drug importation bandwagon. The panelists will also discuss Medicare reform, how best to solve the problem of the uninsured, and whether the United States should adopt single-payer health care.

“We are deeply concerned about the quest of American politicians to import prescription drugs from Canada,” said panelist Sally C. Pipes. “The San Francisco supervisors seek to reduce drug prices by imposing the price controls of other nations on us. Such importation will create higher prices and scarcity in Canada, and in America it will quash research and development for promising new therapies, degrading overall health care in the long term,” she said.

In a November 2003 open letter to Congress, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and other economists warned: “Even if people were to realize that price controls are preventing new drugs from being developed, undoing the effects of those controls would be a difficult task. Customers would have to pay higher prices for years before they saw benefits.”

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