My Canadian Pharmacy is a company that is built entirely around the idea of making high-quality medications available to everyone. On this page, we will take time to show you how our philosophy is supported through concrete steps that we take in the direction of bringing you the safest and most efficient healthcare solutions.
Price for value, not name: quality meds don’t have to cost more
We are certain that you have heard about our ethics when it comes to price-setting. Our pharmacy is known far and wide for consistently offering the lowest prices on the market. We would like to let you inside what’s behind the facade of it, and explain why high quality does not have to equal a high price.
When it comes down to medications, it is their active substance that makes a product what it is. All of its pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic characteristics depend on the nature of its main component. In the case of In it is ibuprofen, in case of Viagra it is sildenafil, and in Aspirin it is acetylsalicylic acid. The same chemical formulas can also be found in a widely assorted variety of other tablets, all being fully analogous to the ones mentioned above.
Every drug was developed by some pharmaceutical company; this company had to invest millions in the research, testing and promoting processes that take up many years before the drug becomes marketed. To keep the cycle of drug invention, the developer company needs to set a higher price for their new medications. This right is protected by the patenting process. However, it is not unusual – and even typical – for pharmaceutical companies to be unwilling to lowball the price set for their inventions even after the exclusive production patent expires. So we do not necessarily see a drop in the cost of medications produced by their developers, or ”brand pills” (also called ”originals”).
To make matters even more complicated for consumers, pharmaceutical companies engaged in drug development and active research for new formulas feel entitled to charge as much as they see fit for their inventions. With no government-run system of regulating the cost of new drugs, prices for many healthcare products spiral out of control, costing up to hundreds of dollars per item.
When a drug becomes available generically, which is produced after the patent expiration by another accredited pharmaceutical company – or sometimes by the very same company who discovered it, but under a different name – it is a new stage in the life cycle of medication. It becomes significantly cheaper even in countries where formula patents are implemented. In countries with patents protecting the manufacturing process rather than the formula itself, the cost of generics is even lower.
This is why the Indian industry of generic drug manufacture is such a runaway success: in the country, pharmaceutical companies with verified quality standards produce drugs from high-quality materials using high-quality processes, but the cost is regulated through substantial competition.
More than 20 years ago now, we at My Canadian Pharmacy established business relationships with multiple overseas companies aiming to find providers of verified quality drugs whose production cost is the main factor determining its marketing price. In this way we can:
- a) create true market diversity for every pharmaceutical product;
- b) retain the original quality;
- c) offer generic analogs to any OTC or prescription drug at 10% of the brand drug cost.
OTC drugs: diversity, standards, and availability
It should be fairly easy to order over-the-counter drugs wherever you are… But this is not how it works, to the major disappointment of customers in the U.S. and other economically developed countries. Despite their ready availability, OTC medications can have a very prohibitive cost. It becomes a challenge for uninsured or underinsured patients to face the out-of-pocket costs of most simple pharmaceutical items.
This is where Canadian Pharmacy fills out the white space, bringing you OTC drugs of vetted quality. You are allowed to order up to 90 days’ supply of every medication you need for personal use, and given that they are heavily discounted at our pharmacy, and come at a price conditioned by their value, not the name of the brand or company producing them, they seem like a lifeline to many Americans.
What are over-the-counter drugs? Why don’t you need a prescription to buy them? Are they safe? OTC drugs are drugs that are “non-prescription”, which the pharmacist can keep on the counter, displaying them for free sale. They can also be advertised to the public.
By definition, the qualification of over the counter drug implies a high degree of safety under normal conditions of use. In general, the risks are closely related to the doses and duration of therapy, or to accidental overdose; a particularly significant example is paracetamol, a commonly used and normally well tolerated anti-febrile analgesic, which in the event of an overdose can also be lethal.
A possible risk inherent in the use of over-the-counter drugs derives from the possibility that the use of an OTC drug masks the symptoms of a disease, delaying the diagnosis by the doctor. A sudden and persistent headache, a stubborn cough, a stomach ache that wakes us up at night, an acute abdominal pain or a sudden constipation can be the symptoms of serious illnesses: in these cases self-medication, postponing the appeal to the doctor, may present a danger to the patient. For this reason, it is essential that self-medication is limited in time and is not continued if it is ineffective or if, after an initial mitigation, the symptoms recur with the original intensity.
Prescription drugs: lower cost, higher precision in customer serving
Alongside with heavily discounted OTC drugs, Canadian Pharmacy offers prescription drugs with as much economical availability as non-prescription medications. We are partial about both the quality of the items we have on the formulary, and the rules regulating the distribution of prescription pills.
The first rule we strictly observe is that buying one of these drugs requires a medical consultation. Your doctor needs to evaluate your condition in their office, and possibly run some tests to establish a) the diagnosis and b) the therapies that can be applied safely, taking into consideration your complete medical history.
For the doctor, the prescription of a drug represents the act that concludes a process initiated by university education and continued with the updating of knowledge and the intrusion “implementations” – stemming from research and of one’s own practical experience. The prescription takes into account all these segments and summarizes them in a very critical moment, which is a good indicator of the overall quality achieved, a quality check, one would say in managerial terms.
We will ask you to submit a valid prescription for medications and refills that you make for prescription drugs. This is done for the ultimate consumer safety because our highest goal is to keep you safe and make you healthier than before, not the other way around. If you are uncertain about how to proceed to submit your prescription, our pharmacists will gladly assist you in this matter. The same goes for customers without a valid prescription: contact us, and we will recommend an online consultation service that can address urgent health issues while you are unable to see your doctor for some reason.
Whatever we do at Canadian Pharmacy is oriented towards bringing you high-quality services that are aimed at your safety and your health outcomes. To this end, we make sure that the quality of our products is carefully verified, and the protocols safeguarding consumer safety are implemented at any moment.