On Wednesday, Donald Trump tweeted that his administration would OK the importation of Canadian drugs: “Lowering drug prices for many Americans — including our great seniors!”

This predictably set off alarms in Ottawa and in the media. But are these concerns really warranted or is this just another example of Trump setting the media agenda, in this case inadvertently in Canada.

Like most of Trump’s policy announcements, there was a lot more fiction than fact. It’s pretty clear that this initiative won’t happen and that in fact, it can’t happen.

It won’t happen because lower drug prices, through Canadian imports or any other avenue, would be contrary to the interests of international pharmaceutical companies. Paraphrasing Gwen Virdon’s inimitable devil’s assistant in Damn Yankees, “What Pharma wants Pharma gets!”

Big Pharma isn’t as big as the financial services industry, but they have been the key sector behind international trade agreements. In the past 30 years Pharma has become one of the biggest Canadian political players. They call the tunes. We play.

For example, last week the Ontario and Quebec governments shamelessly shilled for Big Pharma opposing a federal government plan for lower drug prices.

If Pharma agreed to unlimited drug importation from Canada, then they might as well allow the U.S. Congress to permit price controls on new drugs. But the industry spends nearly a quarter of a billion dollars lobbying the U.S. government every year, so that won’t happen.

The U.S. is the only country without drug price controls. U.S. medicare is forbidden from negotiating lower drug costs. Big Pharma controls all the levers. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is the former president of the American Division of Eli Lily.

And, of course, if for some reason this plan did go ahead, Canada drug wholesalers could never supply a small part of the American market. There always seem to be Canadian shortages of some drugs. Currently some cancer drugs are running short. We couldn’t maintain the integrity of our drug supply system if most of it were going to the U.S.

So why did Trump tweet that he would allow the importation of lower cost Canadian drugs on Wednesday when it won’t happen? It has nothing to do with us. It hardly ever does. Rather Trump and the Republicans are vulnerable on health care and he needs to change that before November 2020.

More and more Americans want a single-payer health system. Obamacare has insured tens of millions of Americans but tens of millions are still uncovered and millions more have such inadequate coverage that medical debt is the leading contributor to consumer bankruptcies. Americans pay the most for everything in health care and they have the highest drug costs.

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders brought a caravan of Americans to Windsor to buy insulin, highlighting the greatly increased American prices for the same drugs. He and Elizabeth Warren, another front-runner in the crowded Democratic presidential race, want to go beyond Obamacare to a single-payer system.

Other candidates are championing “Medicare for All” allowing younger Americans to buy into the U.S. health plan primarily designed for seniors. These are very popular policies to the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to pay for housing and food. Many of these folks voted for Trump in 2016.

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Finally, the Democrats held their second series of debates on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Trump’s tweet took flight on Wednesday morning. He successfully sucked some of the attention away from his opponents and at the same time he threw a pretend bone to his base.

Donald Trump has no intention of lowering American drug prices. His plan is barely smoke and mirrors. It won’t ever get much further than Thursday’s headlines. Yet we’re discussing it seriously in Canada when we have our own drug policy issues to debate. Single-payer pharmacare anyone?

Dr. Michael Rachlis is a public health physician and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

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