OTTAWA – Health Minister Mark Holland has been calling around to United States officials to let them know that the Canadian government will be guarding its medical drug supply after the U.S. moved to allow states to mass import medicine from Canada. He says he’s received assurances that the U.S. government has no intention of triggering drug shortages in Canada. Health Canada issued a readout of Holland’s conversations in the past week with the U.S. secretary of health and human services and the American ambassador to Canada about the decision. Mark Holland, Canada
Great idea, lets import drugs from a country that doesn’t make drugs. Where do they come from then? The plan is to buy the drugs we sold to Canada, back from Canada, in order to save money. Just fucking brilliant I tell ya.
It’s white-label socialism.
DeSantis, die hard advocate of the free market, is facing a problem that the free market cannot solve. He needs a government solution, but he can’t pitch one without losing his base.
So his solution is to get Canada to do it for him. These drugs are only cheaper in Canada because of government interventions like single payer healthcare, price controls and support for generics. DeSantis gets to take advantage of all of that without doing any of it for himself, and he gets to sell it as a capitalist free market solution.