I worked for an online pharmacy in Canada for many years, and it’s fraught and full of grey areas for sure. But so so many Americans count on importing generics to afford their medication. You’re talking several times the price difference for the same pills, life changing amounts of money for older people on fixed incomes with health problems. They will simply not be able to access their medication anymore.
Yeah, it would...and yet, they covered that as well with another recent change:
Packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
I have no affiliation. If anyone wants a domestic alternative to low cost pharmaceuticals this is a good one. Also sometimes GoodRx is worth checking out. Don’t hesitate to ask a pharmacist for a discount if you’re not using insurance. Sometimes that is the best price.
10 years of believing your color coded wave of choice is going to happen and still winding up with a 50-50 senate
the seats necessary to alter that aren't even open, how gullible do people have to be? well, not very, independents are the largest bloc now, but of the remaining partisans... hello? your algorithm is fake
There's nothing in the CBP rule that prohibits importing prescriptions, although there will no longer be a duty exemption for them. The rule is about suspending the 'de minimis' exemption for shipments valued under $800...
Starting Oct 22, packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
This was the case for at least a year. I used to use AliExpress for affordable small electronics, and when this came into effect, it killed the whole thing (and my hobby, because no way I'm paying the Amazon or eBay tax).
Various pharmacies in Canada will accept a US prescription and send you the medication via mail, usually at far cheaper than what you would pay for the same in the US.
Canadian pharmacies pay Canadian tariffs. Americans pay American tariffs. American importers are no longer exempted from paying American tariffs applied by the US government for goods de minimis goods they import from Canada.
This post is about American importers no longer having exemption on tariffs they would have otherwise paid to the US government.
At no point has Canadian pharmacies ever paid American tariffs. This is fiction you invented.
I don’t know what you’re saying, but for those confused. Starting in 2025, the de minimis exception was removed. This added delays to purchases of drugs from Canada to the US, and required consumers to pay new duties. These duties were collected by the pharmacies at order time, or at least my experience was that the pharmacies would charge your card for them. This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
These duties were annoying but bearable. However these new changes will effectively shut down all consumer orders of drugs from Canada starting on Oct 22. So if you need these drugs to stay alive, order them right now.
PS This new rule is going to put my family’s health at risk and I’m deeply pissed about it. Having some HNer pick this moment for pedantry is incredibly on brand.
> This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
It's very dangerous to assume common understanding here when Trump has been loudly claiming the opposite, i.e. that the tariffs would be paid by the sender rather than the importer. It would have been more accurate to state that "Canadian pharmacies have already been including the tarrifs in the total order cost".
Trump is trying to trade the petro dollar and opec for Venezuelan oil that will tank the dollar and make debt unpayable (every advisor has said this), how he's trying to make medicine unaffordable before alternatives are ready. Sheesh.
Every use case for tarrifs include got subsidy and small trade barriers so it can grow with market share.
He didn't manage to sell them. Everyone hates the tariffs, which are widely understood to have contributed to high prices and economic stagnation.
What he did manage to do is bully the abjectly servile GOP leaders of Congress into not doing anything about the tariffs, even though setting trade policy is expressly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution, and Trump has repeatedly exceeded any legal authority.
Nope, Congress has authorized the executive to impose tariffs multiple times for multiple different reasons. Tariff Act of '30, Trade Expansion Act of '62, Trade Act of '74, etc.
He gets away with it because a lot of right-wing elites _love_ the idea of taxing consumption rather than income (or, heaven forbid, wealth).
Additionally, Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs... and a lot of their base would rather believe that than admit that they got suckered by an obvious scam.
He doesn't actually "get away" with it. A lot of people, left and right, are unhappy about tariffs. But for now, he controls the executive, so it is what it is.
The problem is it was never an executive power to begin with. The unitary executive theory pushed by the Heritage Foundation is counter to everything the US was founded on. Decisions from the current SCOTUS are questionable given the conflicts of interest with certain spouses and the endless improper gifts.
His core base (a solid 25-50% of the party) would rather die than vote for a democrat and all this DSA scare mongering is only entrenching them further/pulling the more moderate among them back into the fold.
The blue wave will likely be a result of blue turnout and some small number of red sitting at home. And sadly the senate is still a toss up
It's silly to claim that a lot of people on the right are unhappy about tariffs.
When Obama put a tariff on Chinese tires, right-wingers (correctly) argued that it was a bad idea that caused American consumers to pay almost a million dollars per "job saved" in the tire industry.
Today the right is in control of the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and and far more news media and... basically just crickets.
As for "he controls the executive". Bullshit. When a Democrat is in office, right-wingers remember that the President is not a king.
Please don't "both sides" this extremely one-sided attack on the American worker.
> Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs
I'm starting to see this backfire with a lot of "personal responsibility" type old-school republicans to whom I talk. They're getting fed up with the administration just blanket blaming anything bad on Biden. Whether that will translate to actual political change, I do not know. But I found it interesting that I'm hearing the frustration more lately.
It doesn't need to translate to actual political change. It needs to translate to them staying at home instead of enthusiastically voting for more sadistic traitorous insanity.
Which is looking quite likely.
Although it does assume there are no peculiar and unexpected anomalies with the vote counting.
Populists of all stripes love tariffs and the illusory promise of autarky. We didn’t see Biden remove any of Trump 1’s tariffs and not a single Democrat in congress has committed to repealing the tariffs.
> The average reading level of American parents of young children is 7th or 8th grade.
> About one in every four Americans (25 percent) is a high school dropout.
> About half (45 percent) have gone to college for some period of time, but fewer than one in six (15 percent) have a college degree.
> Nearly 50 percent of the Americans surveyed cannot read well enough to find a single piece of information in a short publication, nor can they make low-level inferences based on what they read.
Oh, FFS. You're conflating capability with inclination. Trump supporters are not unintelligent; they have made a choice (conscious or not) to indulge their fears and hubris over making an informed decision. "They believe whatever they feel is truth and vote their vibes accordingly," is correct, but they act this way not because they're incapable of thinking critically, but because they allow a milieu of entitlement, fear, righteous indignation, and misplaced hope to drive them towards easy answers. "Why?" is complex, but it's still unacceptable, regardless.
I have a problem with "Trump voters are idiots" because it lets them off the hook. They need to be held accountable, helped where their grievances are real, and pushed to reconcile their feelings with the facts.
> but they act this way not because they're incapable of thinking critically, but because they allow a milieu of entitlement, fear, righteous indignation, and misplaced hope to drive them towards easy answers
My brother in Christ, re read the sentence you wrote. That is quite literally the inability to critically think.
An inability to think critically is not the same thing as a lack of critical thinking in a specific context. Would you agree that you think critically in some contexts and make emotion-driven decisions in others? I know I do, as much as I try to apply critical thinking universally.
No. I make almost every decision from a place of hyper rational logic and reason, partly from my professional experience in risk management, and partly because I take pharmaceuticals that have a side effect of quelling any emotional response. I cannot make an emotional decision because I don’t feel emotion driven. It’s delightful if I’m being honest.
Certainly, I understand why the emotion drive humans do emotion driven things. I do not.
If only it were so simple. Many of CBP's policies are clearly defined by U.S. Congress (most recent example, which actually establishes CBP: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/644/...). That said, Congress appears to have ceded their oversight role by allowing these rules to change without comment.
I flagged this and wanted to explain my reasoning.
At the time of writing, the article states something that its own link doesn't support (i.e. it is inaccurate). CBP hasn't "suspended all personal prescription importation." What they've done is removed De Minimis Exemption (i.e. duty free below $800), and that's it. Meaning you can still important personal medication before and after Oct 22nd, what has changed is that now it is subject to normal duty.
Do I think this is bad for people importing personal medication? Absolutely I do, and I oppose it. However, I don't think misstating the argument is constructive nor warranted. You could make the argument using the facts on the ground, and then re-state that in the thread title.
So the story is worthy of discussion, and interesting (even the personal medication POV). But this link and this title aren't "it." Hopefully we can get a higher quality source and title on this topic.
It's not as simple as "You will now pay duty." Senders will be required to pay bond, and there will be a crushing load of new paperwork. Combined with extra duty, that will have the same effect as an outright ban.
This will be financially catastrophic for many Americans who may suddenly have to find hundreds of dollars a month.
That's standard operating procedure for any non-de-minimis importer. The $800 limit was only imposed in 2016, historically it was a lot lower than that.
Far more useful would be to wonder for a moment why people voted that way, especially since I would wager no small part of the reason is because people are living in different realities stemming from hyper-targeted curated clickbait slop
Are you denying Trump is openly racist? I thought that was now accepted by the right, and that the new strategy was to instead explain how being racist isn’t actually that bad. Why would you have such a knee jerk reaction?
Because it's a facile non-explanation to say people voted for Trump simply because of racism. If we're going to provide overly simplistic one-word reasons I'd proffer "inequality"
Between "Kavanaugh stops" (aka police harassment of brown-skinned people) and racial gerrymandering being brought back (and Mississippi GOP immediately celebrating it in the old capitol associated with Jim Crow), what do you think?
Given that those things existed in the past, I don't think they are sufficient to explain the more unique situation of the present, and thus don't offer a compelling avenue to counteract it
> Do you think this will motivate people who may have voted for trump but been ok the fence by calling them stupid?
Yes. That's been a surprising and important lesson of the Trump movement's success; we've learned that insulting your political opponents can help convince fence-sitters, and doesn't automatically repel them. I wish it weren't so, but in the modern political climate, abandoning insults seems as strategically unwise as abandoning fundraising.
I worked for an online pharmacy in Canada for many years, and it’s fraught and full of grey areas for sure. But so so many Americans count on importing generics to afford their medication. You’re talking several times the price difference for the same pills, life changing amounts of money for older people on fixed incomes with health problems. They will simply not be able to access their medication anymore.
costplusdrugs.com
I have no affiliation. If anyone wants a domestic alternative to low cost pharmaceuticals this is a good one. Also sometimes GoodRx is worth checking out. Don’t hesitate to ask a pharmacist for a discount if you’re not using insurance. Sometimes that is the best price.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.
the seats necessary to alter that aren't even open, how gullible do people have to be? well, not very, independents are the largest bloc now, but of the remaining partisans... hello? your algorithm is fake
Seems to be anyone's win right now: https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/senate/2026/toss-up (and RCP is considered to be conservative).
Granted, 66% chance is still essentially a toss up.
but it cant pass any laws. they’re still cooked by the filibuster (until they get bored of it)
This prevents it.
Their own primer on the topic: https://www.personalimportation.org/understand-the-issue
Canadian pharmacies pay Canadian tariffs. Americans pay American tariffs. American importers are no longer exempted from paying American tariffs applied by the US government for goods de minimis goods they import from Canada.
This post is about American importers no longer having exemption on tariffs they would have otherwise paid to the US government.
At no point has Canadian pharmacies ever paid American tariffs. This is fiction you invented.
These duties were annoying but bearable. However these new changes will effectively shut down all consumer orders of drugs from Canada starting on Oct 22. So if you need these drugs to stay alive, order them right now.
PS This new rule is going to put my family’s health at risk and I’m deeply pissed about it. Having some HNer pick this moment for pedantry is incredibly on brand.
It's very dangerous to assume common understanding here when Trump has been loudly claiming the opposite, i.e. that the tariffs would be paid by the sender rather than the importer. It would have been more accurate to state that "Canadian pharmacies have already been including the tarrifs in the total order cost".
Every use case for tarrifs include got subsidy and small trade barriers so it can grow with market share.
He didn't manage to sell them. Everyone hates the tariffs, which are widely understood to have contributed to high prices and economic stagnation.
What he did manage to do is bully the abjectly servile GOP leaders of Congress into not doing anything about the tariffs, even though setting trade policy is expressly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution, and Trump has repeatedly exceeded any legal authority.
Additionally, Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs... and a lot of their base would rather believe that than admit that they got suckered by an obvious scam.
The blue wave will likely be a result of blue turnout and some small number of red sitting at home. And sadly the senate is still a toss up
When Obama put a tariff on Chinese tires, right-wingers (correctly) argued that it was a bad idea that caused American consumers to pay almost a million dollars per "job saved" in the tire industry.
Today the right is in control of the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and and far more news media and... basically just crickets.
As for "he controls the executive". Bullshit. When a Democrat is in office, right-wingers remember that the President is not a king.
Please don't "both sides" this extremely one-sided attack on the American worker.
His followers are literally beyond reason and will accept anything he says. It's so very depressing.
I'm starting to see this backfire with a lot of "personal responsibility" type old-school republicans to whom I talk. They're getting fed up with the administration just blanket blaming anything bad on Biden. Whether that will translate to actual political change, I do not know. But I found it interesting that I'm hearing the frustration more lately.
Which is looking quite likely.
Although it does assume there are no peculiar and unexpected anomalies with the vote counting.
Source?
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter... (“54% of U.S. adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level”)
Assessing the Readability of Capital Pattern Jury Instructions - https://docs.rwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&contex... (2013)
"Plain English" Jury Instructions: Why They’re Still Needed And What The Appellate Community Can Do To Help - https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/plain-eng... (2004)
> The average reading level of American parents of young children is 7th or 8th grade.
> About one in every four Americans (25 percent) is a high school dropout.
> About half (45 percent) have gone to college for some period of time, but fewer than one in six (15 percent) have a college degree.
> Nearly 50 percent of the Americans surveyed cannot read well enough to find a single piece of information in a short publication, nor can they make low-level inferences based on what they read.
I have a problem with "Trump voters are idiots" because it lets them off the hook. They need to be held accountable, helped where their grievances are real, and pushed to reconcile their feelings with the facts.
My brother in Christ, re read the sentence you wrote. That is quite literally the inability to critically think.
Certainly, I understand why the emotion drive humans do emotion driven things. I do not.
the C in CBP, "Customs", is specifically this kind of stuff.
If there is one most-bipartisan-thing-ever, ceding oversight is it. ex:FastTrack Trade
At the time of writing, the article states something that its own link doesn't support (i.e. it is inaccurate). CBP hasn't "suspended all personal prescription importation." What they've done is removed De Minimis Exemption (i.e. duty free below $800), and that's it. Meaning you can still important personal medication before and after Oct 22nd, what has changed is that now it is subject to normal duty.
Do I think this is bad for people importing personal medication? Absolutely I do, and I oppose it. However, I don't think misstating the argument is constructive nor warranted. You could make the argument using the facts on the ground, and then re-state that in the thread title.
So the story is worthy of discussion, and interesting (even the personal medication POV). But this link and this title aren't "it." Hopefully we can get a higher quality source and title on this topic.
This will be financially catastrophic for many Americans who may suddenly have to find hundreds of dollars a month.
I read a lot of it - enjoy reading the butt-covering “legal justifications” written in explaining why there was no public comment period, etc.
Do you think this will motivate people who may have voted for trump but been ok the fence by calling them stupid?
Is it to help give a better alternative or actionable advice? Does it contribute anything to the discussion?
It seems it primarily exist to give you a hit of self righteous dopamine while attempting to create further rifts between individuals.
"Fuck your feelings"
Yes. That's been a surprising and important lesson of the Trump movement's success; we've learned that insulting your political opponents can help convince fence-sitters, and doesn't automatically repel them. I wish it weren't so, but in the modern political climate, abandoning insults seems as strategically unwise as abandoning fundraising.