Actually, many of these are medications (even life saving ones) being seized to protect inflated pharmaceutical pricing and profits at the expense of poorer Americans (and those lacking health care). Significant numbers of people are ordering the medications out of desperation.
Yes ? Are you suggesting they that comes out of pharma profits?
> it sounds a lot to me like the “piracy is theft” argument which has not been proved or well supported.
No because not taking medication isn't an option like not watching a pirated movie.
Perhaps a closer analogy is shoplifting . Sure some amount of stealing is accounted for in the system but large scale shoplifting gets passed on to consumers.
Just not through the non-free American prescription drug market.
There might be a long term impact where fewer drugs are developed because there are lower profits, but even that feels awfully close to the "piracy hurts creative industries" argument that has been proven inconclusive at best and directionally wrong at worst.
thats the reason gp is doing it. has nothing to do with all the stuff you've written. Gp doesn't care about 'weakest fellow citizens' plight or whatever, infact they don't care that prices for 'weakest citizens' might go up from his actions.
The drugs are paid for, they’re not stolen, and they’re not taken from the people who are buying the drugs another way - they’re separate systems. That’s actually more ridiculous than calling media piracy ‘theft’ and that’s a high bar. I honestly don’t see how you could possibly see the illegal drug trade as ‘stealing’
wouldn't it raise prices for legitimate buyers? ( ppl not willing to commit a federal crime) , hence taking money away from them.
> If anything I'm reducing demand for "legitimate" avenues, which should reduce the price.
These aren't stale muffins at your local grocery store to induce demand by lowering prices. These are supposedly life saving 800/month drugs, what would be the motivation for lowering prices.
It's the same drug. It costs $34 online because that's how much it costs for the factory to produce it and make a profit. It costs $800 in America because that's how much my insurance company decided I'm going to pay for it. It would be idiotic for me, with my extremely limited funds, to pay for the American one.
If federal laws were created with sole purpose of inflating pharma profits then you would just invest your life savings in these pharma companies and be set for life. You've literally found the golden goose if you really belive what you wrote there.