WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley released the following statement today in response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s proposed “Safe Importation Action Plan.”
“We share the desire of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to take steps to reduce healthcare costs for Americans, including the costs of prescription drugs that are saving lives. The "Safe Importation Action Plan” described today by HHS would make American patients less safe, without improving the affordability of medicines. The approaches outlined in this proposal to encourage and facilitate importation of drugs manufactured for foreign markets, will have significant and perverse consequences, including exposing patients to the substandard, falsified, and counterfeit medicines that proliferate in the global marketplace. Patient access to life-saving medicines is often delayed or denied altogether by government bureaucrats in the markets targeted by the HHS importation measures. America should be exporting its innovative healthcare solutions, not importing the delayed care of foreign bureaucracies. We urge the HHS to abandon the importation gimmick and focus on systemic streamlining to speed the flow of safe, effective, and affordable medicines to American patients.”
