[jmckib]

> We have ~10x the population of Canada, and California alone could use up all of Canada's medicines. Not sure Canada would go for it.

Couldn't Canadian drug companies increase supply if the demand was there? In the short term, sure, they would not be able to handle our level of demand, but unless there's some constraint I'm not aware of they could always just scale up and make more animal insulin or whatever.

[TylerE]

They don’t make the drugs in Canada. They buy them in the open market, likely from us.

[Scoundreller]

It's sort of the open market.

The history is that Canada used to have "compulsory licensing" for patented drugs. Anyone could manufacture a patented drug in Canada and pay a ?6?% or whatever royalty to the patent owner and they just had to deal with it.

Over the years, first 4, then 10 years of exclusivity were provided to the patent owner.

Then the WTO came along, and presently, everyone has agreed to ~20y exclusivity and charge/pay the median price of OECD countries before it's a royalty-free free-for-all.

http://publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/prb9946-e.h...

Canadian generic drugs today aren't usually cheaper than US generics, except where patent exclusivity mismatches.