Pres. Trump's pharmacy ideas

President Trump has it backwards when he declares that USA will no longer subsidize foreign countries' low prices of American medicines.

American pharmaceutical companies price their medicines lower in foreign countries in order to compete with similar medicines manufactured in those countries. Their huge profits on American sales allow this.

I am an American-trained physician (now retired) who spent five years in Myanmar, and another ten years in Thailand, licensed by both governments to practice medicine and surgery. I worked in hospitals and was in charge of ordering the medical supplies. That was in the days when most companies published prices in their catalogs.

I ordered many generic medicines from the Rangoon-based Burma Phramaceutical Industry. Their manufacturing standards followed the British Pharmacopia. Local labor, and lower shipping costs allowed them to sell at prices most Burmese could afford.

For medicines not sold by BPI, I shopped around from Australian, Japanese, or European catalogs, all of them eager to expand into Southeast Asia. I needed very few medicines from USA.

What the US Government is doing is subsidizing exorbitant profits for American corporations by preventing US agencies (Medicare, etc.) to negotiate costs.

This is counter-productive for the American public. Congress could easily remedy this:

(1) Require pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to publish their up-to-date wholesale prices in annually published, freely available catalogues. I have found most physicians clueless about the cost of medicines they prescribe.

(2) Eliminate the ban on negotiation of prices by public agencies.

Keith Dahlberg, MD keithdahlberg03@gmail.com