Drugs From Canada Still an Issue
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2003-12-24 11:38:00-05:00
Congress passed the Medicare drug benefit legislation last month without resolving one of the hottest, most emotional issues of the whole prescription drug debate: Should Americans legally be permitted to buy U.S. drugs from Canada, where they are generally much cheaper?
That issue remains as compelling and contentious as ever. And the new Medicare law does nothing to change the fact that cross-border traffic in prescription drugs is illegal unless the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) certifies the safety of the drugs.
And no HHS secretary—even in the Clinton administration, which signed legislation allowing reimportation—has been willing to do that.
The new Medicare legislation does mandate a study—due a year from now—to determine whether reimportation can be done safely, but it is too early to tell how definitive or persuasive that study will be.
Meanwhile, more than a million Americans buy their drugs from Canadian pharmacies, and a number of state and local governments are moving to set up their own programs to purchase drugs from Canada.
"The border traffic won't stop, and the issue is not going away," says Joel Barkin, a spokesman for Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who sponsored a House bill last year that would legalize reimportation. "New reimportation legislation will most definitely be back in 2004," Barkin says. "We are already working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this."
Robert Blendon, health policy analyst at the Harvard School of Public Health, agrees that pressure for the "Canadian option" will continue. "If the same drugs are available [in Canada] at better prices," he says, "Americans will want to buy them."
AARP will continue to support buying drugs from licensed Canadian pharmacies, but only with safety measures and oversight from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an HHS agency. It wants the FDA to get the resources needed for an effective reimportation program, AARP policy director John Rother says.
But the opposition is strong. Some U.S. drug makers are cutting supplies to Canada to choke off sales. And the FDA is going after companies that facilitate mail orders from Canadian pharmacies. "This isn't the last word," Rother says. "It's just the start."
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