The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices

That's exactly what happens in Canada. Because the healthcare system is publicly funded, the government has enormous market power that it can use to drive drug prices below efficient levels: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2009/12/should-the-governm.... Allowing re-importation of those drugs into the U.S. would create a price ceiling at whatever level the Canadian government had negotiated, and would effectively allow the Canadian government to set drug prices in the U.S.

That would be good for consumers in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. It's no coincidence that the U.S. is the epicenter of pharmaceutical advancements. When I was a kid (early 1990s), HIV/AIDS was something we regarded as a death sentence. I vividly remember people talking in hushed tones when Magic Johnson was diagnosed in 1991. 26 years later, Magic Johnson is still kicking, HIV is no longer a death sentence, and we have Big Pharma to thank for it (and not Canada).

It is precisely because people who had the polar opposite mindset who brought about the outcome of "living in a wealthy country", and now people like you want to give away and sabotage things and culture and mindsets that are not yours to give away or destroy just because you take them for granted and have no sense for what it took to achieve such a state.

"We live in a wealthy country" not by accident, but by people's values and tenacious determination and culture and social priorities that are often generalized as God's blessings or by the grace of God. You can look to places that are not wealthy for clear proof of mentalities and values that never have, currently do not, and will not result in the same outcomes no matter how much you give away other people's things. Feel free to give away what you have to others that don't have whatever you want to give them, but how about you control your authoritarian dictator impulses to give away other people's things, lest it result in inevitable conflict and misery. It's always the same story with you immoral authoritarian types, give away other people's things against their will, but not your own.

"We live in a wealthy country" is the counter-productive entitled mindset of someone who is freeloading and has things they were provided without having to earn them and therefor have zero sense for what it actually took to bring such a state about, which leads to it begin taken for granted and seen as inexhaustible.

That's not a good comparison, because we're talking about reimportation - ie, drugs that are produced in the US and exported to another country before being reimported. In general, nobody's interested in reimporting steel produced in the US and exported to China.

> Because the healthcare system is publicly funded, the government has enormous market power that it can use to drive drug prices below efficient levels

First, Canadian healthcare is run at the provincial level, not at the federal level. So while each province/territory is a monopsony, they're each fairly small.

Secondly, pharmaceuticals are typically not covered in Canada; patients pay for most drugs out of pocket, and their generic prices are actually not much lower than they are in the US[0]

> Allowing re-importation of those drugs into the U.S. in effect allows the Canadian government to set drug prices in the U.S.

With free trade, another country is still free to subsidize the goods that it imports from the US, but with the knowledge that they'll be subsidizing whatever portion of Americans choose to reimport those drugs at the subsidized prices.

In reality, that reimportation won't need to happen, because it'll just apply backpressure on the initial sale prices in both markets from the manufacturer.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3107113/