By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Natalie Keegan, who has end-stage pancreatic cancer, believes ozone therapy is keeping her alive.
So the Vero Beach woman, who takes six ozone capsules a day, was alarmed about having to pay an extra $246 in new customs duties and fees for ozone oil from the Netherlands. Keegan was already paying $1,200 plus $100 shipping costs for 500 capsules – and ozone therapy is just one of several conventional and alternative treatments she’s getting “indefinitely.”
A retired nurse practitioner, Keegan, 71, was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in January 2023. Still, she radiates quiet strength and chooses to be nobody’s victim.
In truth, though, she and countless other seriously ill patients are casualties of an erratic global trade policy. It seems like every day, President Donald Trump is threatening another outsized “tariff,“ a misnomer for consumer tax.
Recently he floated a 200 percent tax on pharmaceuticals. Then on Tuesday Trump announced a “very low tariff” on medicines starting next month will be followed by a “very high” one in a year.
The medical establishment and patient advocates are calling for exemptions and sounding an alarm they hope the public will recognize and heed.
The impact will be enormous. In Florida alone, with a population of 23.37 million, an estimated one in five residents, or more than 4.5 million, live with cancer. Over two million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. this year.
Tariffs on drugs and drug ingredients “could impact patient care by jeopardizing the availability of vital medications and essential health care devices,” American Hospital Association (AHA) chair Tina Freese Decker wrote in May. “They also could raise costs for hospitals and heighten shortages and supply chain disruptions.”
AHA president Rick Pollack warned against a planned National Security probe of medical imports. “The investigation could form the basis for tariffs or other trade restrictions for pharmaceutical products,” he told Commerce Department officials.
‘TARIFF SOMETHING ELSE’
“Don’t let patients become collateral damage in a trade war,” Andrew Spiegel wrote in a June opinion piece for RealClearHealth. Spiegel is CEO of the Global Colon Cancer Association and co-founder of a second nonprofit, the Colorectal Cancer Alliance.
“Tariff something else. Tariff Doritos or cigarettes or luxury goods, not people’s access to medications. That will raise prices for American patients. There’s no positive outcome that comes from that,” Spiegel said in an interview with Florida Bulldog.
His response to Keegan’s situation: “Whatever is keeping her alive and allowing her to have hope…She should be able to continue that journey without some political maneuver getting in the way. That’s common sense.”
Keegan said her doctor told her it may be possible to obtain the ozone capsules heprescribed directly from the United Kingdom, which has lower duties than most nations, and eventually from a U.S. supplier.
But Spiegel questioned both scenarios. “If the goal is to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., making people go out of the U.S. to buy these treatments because they’re cheaper doesn’t accomplish that goal.” Also, the drugs might be unregulated so “you don’t know what you’re getting.”
He said U.S. suppliers won’t spring into operation anytime soon. “It’s not like you’re making birdhouses, where you can open a factory in a month. These are very complex supply chain issues and some ingredients you can only get in other countries.”
“I’ve heard it will take a decade to move all supply chains from country to country,” Spiegel said. “The ingredients come here, we make the medications and ship them out to the rest of the world. We’re supplying half the world’s meds.”
“This system is best for America,” he said. “We have amazing access to meds. Why do you want to mess with all those supply chains and increase costs – and who ends up paying? It’s always passed on to the consumer and people can’t afford their meds now.”
FOOD, RENT OR MEDS
Although the chaotic Trump tariff rollout hasn’t shaken Wall Street yet, economists say it’s already driving inflation. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7 percent from a year ago “as the global trade war started to bite,” The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Through May the U.S. collected $22.2 billion in duties on imports, according to the Wall Street Journal. The money goes to the U.S. Treasury by way of Customs and Border Protection, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security.
Long before Trump set out to control world commerce, healthcare debt was responsible for a big chunk of U.S. personal bankruptcies. Studies show medical bills triggered roughly two-thirds of them.
Many patients barely scrape by or face impossible choices among buying food or paying rent or filling prescriptions. Given their families’ basic needs, they don’t always make decisions that are most likely to prolong their lives, experts say.
A survey by GoodRx Research published July 2 shows that 27 percent of Americans don’t fill prescriptions because of the cost. About four in 10 older adults with Medicare reported problems getting treatment for the same reason, according to a 2024 Commonwealth Fund survey.
Once Trump’s tariffs take effect, they’ll make critically needed healthcare more expensive, economists say. Diederik Stadig of ING Bank predicted the cost of a 24-week course of cancer treatments could increase by as much as $10,000.
An estimated 125,000 U.S. deaths per year would be avoided if patients followed their doctors’ advice about medications, according to an article in The Permanente Journal by Fred Kleinsinger, a University of California medical professor.
“That number would likely rise under tariffs on imported medicines, as they would impede affordability and access by increasing drug prices and disrupting supply chains,” Spiegel said.
A ‘BIZARRE’ TRANSACTION
Natalie Keegan spent precious time dealing with confounding paperwork before she was able to obtain her most recent shipment of ozone capsules.
Apparently, she wound up paying the 10 percent duty Trump imposed on products from the UK, where the company that owns her Netherlands supplier is based. He has refrained from taxing conventional medicines, but ozone treatment is classified as a food supplement and therefore fits a loophole.
Keegan said she placed her order in early May and started getting emails and texts requiring her acknowledgement of “prior notice” of the new charges. A 10-page invoice included the Customs duty and fees for “clearance” by the Food and Drug Administration and “disbursement.”
“FedEx kept asking me for the prior notice and sent me a link to apply,” Keegan said. The requests referred to her as a business and asked for details like its name and address.
“Finally I gave up and wrote back to FedEx: ‘Why are you sending me this? I’m not a business, I’m a customer.’ It was the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
After her doctor got the CEO of the UK company involved, Keegan sent along the company’s London address, and that did the trick.
“I’ve ordered three other shipments from this company going back three years and never had to deal with any of that,” Keegan said.
It was “bizarre” and stressful, but she doesn’t let that sort of thing slow her down. Soon after recovering from a bout of pneumonia, Keegan flew to Chicago to visit her son and enjoy a daytrip to the city’s renowned Art Institute.
Back home she rallies with the resistance against the Trump regime. One side of her sign says, “No Kings;” the other says, “Hands Off.”
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