Letters: Canadian Medications Cheaper, Good Quality

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I would like to comment on an article that was in The Chronicle a couple weeks ago on personal importation of prescription drugs from Canada.

I have been having my asthma inhalers mailed to me from Canada for over six months now, and I am very well satisfied. Not only is the medication exactly the same, and the same brand as what I was purchasing here in the U.S., but there is twice as much in each canister at nearly one third the cost. 

It is fallacious to say that medication from Canada is not as high quality as those produced here. Canada is not a third world country; their medications have just as high and stringent testing as the U.S. 

Perhaps Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray are against personal importation of medication because they are not personally affected by the issue and probably have not bought any medication from Canada themselves. Between our greedy insurance companies charging higher and higher premiums for health care and the prices for medication being raised exorbitantly by big pharmaceuticals, Americans whose incomes are middle to lower class are hard put to make ends meet. 

Besides my two inhalers I have several other medications I have to buy every month for other chronic health problems. The cost of all of my medications combined was so great that it became nearly impossible to afford them all, and live. 

Then someone told me about buying medicine from Canada and I decided to give it a try. I called and was taken through a very thorough check of all my health issues and current medications. A doctor faxed my prescription to the Canadian pharmacy I had contacted, and my medications were sent to me even before they received my payment. 

Also, the person on the phone asked me to be sure and contact them immediately if I did not receive my order. I was told that if that happened they would send it again. 



As a result of getting my inhalers from Canada I am better able to afford my other medications. I can’t begin to express the mental, emotional and financial relief just that one change has made. 

I tried to get other medications from Canada and was told they could not send them because they were blocked by the U.S. government. Politicians like Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have made it impossible to have affordable medications by their stubborn refusal to approve personal importation of prescription drugs, and no one is policing our insurance companies or our big pharmaceuticals. 

Both kinds of businesses have a stranglehold on the American people to get as much money as possible out of them, and the politicians are right in there helping them get what they can. As free citizens of a free country, every American should be able to purchase their medications wherever they please. It should be one of our freedoms, and our right. 

D. Louise Khvoroff

Randle