Canada Is Freeloading Off American Drugs, Says Canadian Paper

The burden of supporting medical innovation should fall on Canadians, not on drug companies or American patients, according to experts

Mariel Mohns, a research specialist at the AIDS Vaccine Research Labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, processes body fluids taken from pregnant rhesus macaque monkeys infected with the Zika virus in Madison, Wisconsin on June 28, 2016 Scott Olson/Getty Images

President Donald Trump recently called out foreign countries, including Canada, for free-riding on drug prices. Trump is right to criticize the Canadian government for artificially lowering drug prices and hampering innovation, says an article by Canada’s Financial Post.

“It’s time for Canada to purge the defeatist parasitism that sometimes characterizes our policy-making,” Richard Owens of Canadian think-tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Stephen Ezell of Washington-based think tank Innovation Technology and Innovation Foundation wrote in the Financial Post.