Make America Healthy Again: End the $800 Eye Drop Racket

Commentary

I have dry eyes. My doctor told me about a new treatment called Miebo.

The price at my local pharmacy: $830 for a one-month supply, before insurance.

I did what any normal person would do. I looked it up online and discovered that the identical medicine—same molecule, same strength, same German manufacturer—has been sold over the counter in Europe since 2015 for about $20. No prescription. No hassle. No $800 bill.

Same liquid. Same bottle. Forty times the price in the United States.

Bausch + Lomb didn’t invent this drug. It licensed it, ran some U.S. trials, then deliberately chose the most profitable regulatory path: full prescription drug status that locks in monopoly pricing until at least 2039. In Europe, it’s classified as a simple medical device.

That extra $800 isn’t paying for innovation. It’s paying for lobbyists, stock buybacks, and the private jets of executives who swear they’re “patient-focused” while charging Americans 40 times what they charge everyone else.

This is why the Make America Healthy Again movement exists.

If we’re serious about putting patients and taxpayers first, we would pass four simple, ironclad reforms—tomorrow:

1. Automatic Over-the-Counter Fast-Track: Any product safely sold over the counter for five years in the European Union, UK, Canada, Japan, or Australia gets an automatic, expedited Food and Drug Administration review for over-the-counter status in the United States. No more “we’ll get around to it.” The default is freedom and low prices.
2. Global Reference Pricing With Teeth: Charge Americans more than 150 percent of the average price in the five largest peer nations and you lose your U.S. patent on that product. Watch how fast $830 eye drops become $50 eye drops when generic competition is the alternative.
3. Safe Personal Importation: A 90-day personal supply of any medicine legally sold elsewhere is legal to import, duty-free, with no Food and Drug Administration or Customs harassment. Americans shouldn’t be treated like criminals for refusing to be gouged.
4. Sunlight on Licensing Deals: When a U.S. company licenses a drug that’s already cheap overseas, the full agreement goes public. Any clause that blocks or delays lower-cost options in the United States becomes void.

These aren’t left-wing or right-wing ideas. They’re pro-patient, pro-taxpayer, pro-common sense ideas. They protect the millions of Americans who pay the highest prices in the world while subsidizing the rest of the planet’s medicines.

Make America Healthy Again means one thing above all: Never again should an American pay $830 for something the rest of the world buys for $20.

It’s time to choose people over patents and patients over profits.

Let’s end the racket.

Let’s make America healthy again.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.