For years, credit card companies have approved online purchases of prescription medications from legitimate importation websites. Starting about a year ago – with Visa being pressured by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (a Big Pharma advocate) – credit card brands began cutting off the ability of many Americans to purchase their medications online.
This sort of bullying can’t stand. Why?
Eliminating the ability to buy safe, affordable health maintenance drugs from legitimate sources using credit cards has several negative consequences.
Patients who require life-sustaining health maintenance drugs will cut pills, skip doses, or even forgo their prescriptions altogether, which has negative primary and secondary health effects.
These same patients will find alternatives, likely in the form of truly rogue pharmacies that…
do not require a valid prescription, or
are not interested in selling the patient anything, or
sell the patient bogus drugs containing harmful ingredients, or
defraud the patient by obtaining their credit card or banking information.
American consumers should have the right to make their own health care decisions, something that Republican candidate for President and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee wrote about in the Orlando Sentinel recently. Big Pharma has pressured credit card companies to help increase their own profits by cutting off your ability to use your own payment options for your legitimate prescription purchases.
What can you do? Write your Member of Congress and U.S. Senators to express your concerns. Tell your elected leaders that you demand they uphold your basic right to accessing safe, affordable health maintenance medications.
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