Is Florida cracking the push for cheaper medicine?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a years-long push, the Food and Drug Administration just allowed Florida to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. This decision follows decades of frustration over U.S. drug prices and could open the doors for other states to do the same.
Read more:
While a number of logistical and legal hurdles remain, Florida has been cleared to import prescription drugs from Canada. The path for Florida started years ago, along with efforts by Congress and pushes from the White House, including from the Trump and Biden administrations.
Daniel Gilbert joins us to discuss the decision, the history and the hurdles that lie ahead for importing Canadian drugs.
Today’s show was produced by Bishop Sand. It was mixed by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Monica Campbell. Thanks to Elana Gordon and Sandhya Somashekhar.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
Correction: A previous version of the show notes for this episode referred to the Food and Drug Administration as the Federal Drug Administration. This version has been corrected.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Daniel when I saw this headline my immediate reaction was oh my gosh what just happened |
| 0:08.9 | this seems like a really big deal am I right to think what the FDA just did in Florida with drug prices? |
| 0:18.0 | Is it a big deal? |
| 0:20.0 | You're right to think is a big deal. |
| 0:22.0 | So... You're right to think it's a big deal. |
| 0:34.0 | So, the FDA on Friday approved Florida's proposal to import a limited number of prescription drugs from Canada. Daniel Gilbert covers the business of medicine for the post. |
| 0:39.0 | He says this decision from the Food and Drug Administration |
| 0:42.0 | is part of a bigger push to bring down |
| 0:44.8 | drug prices for everything from cancer to mental health conditions. |
| 0:49.8 | The idea of importing drugs much less expensively from Canada as animated politicians and |
| 0:58.8 | regular American consumers for a couple of decades now. This decision by FDA for the first time |
| 1:07.2 | creates a pathway for states to actually buy prescription drugs in bulk from Canada that could be a |
| 1:14.0 | potentially very significant cost savings for them. But if other states get a |
| 1:19.1 | green light to buy medicine from Canada that country could risk running out of its own supplies. |
| 1:25.0 | So it's really not clear what will happen if those two things collide. |
| 1:30.0 | From the Newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:37.0 | I'm Elahay I'm Elahay I Zadie. It's Monday January 8th. |
| 1:41.0 | Today, Daniel explains why for the first time a US state can |
| 1:46.6 | import cheaper medicine from Canada and whether this could change the cost of |
| 1:51.4 | medicine throughout the US. Just really briefly one of the reasons I think this is catching a lot of people's |
| 2:09.4 | attention is because how much drugs cost in the United States, right? |
| 2:14.5 | Is that true? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.