Last month Peter Rost, a vice president of marketing for Pfizer Inc.,
broke ranks with the drug industry and his employer by publicly
endorsing a proposal in Maryland's Montgomery County to allow its
employees to buy cheaper drugs from Canada. Rost disputed industry
claims that reimportation would pose a public health risk. "The real
concern about safety is about people who do not take drugs because they
cannot afford it," he said.
Rost--who made it clear that he was speaking only for himself, not
Pfizer--joins a growing number of city and state officials across the
country arguing for reimportation. Only a few months ago, a new law
seemed inevitable. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson suggested that was so. Unfortunately, "inevitable" may not mean
any time soon.
Competing reimportation bills have been bottled up in the Senate for
months. And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee isn't likely
to allow a debate or vote before the election. Last month he argued that
with only a few weeks left in the session and other pressing issues,
there wasn't enough time for a full debate.
While Congress dithers, states and cities skirt if not break the law by
helping seniors and others take advantage of lower prescription-drug
prices in Canada. One such program is supposed to be introduced soon in
Illinois.
The lack of progress is frustrating. Last spring, at his confirmation
hearings, Medicare chief Mark McClellan promised to help develop
legislation to allow imports of lower-cost prescription drugs with
safeguards to protect consumers. Frist said that the Senate "will begin
a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe
reimportation of FDA-approved prescription drugs." But Sen. Byron Dorgan
(D-N.D.) said recently that the process had "led to nothing."
No wonder some politicians are so frustrated that they're openly
challenging the Food and Drug Administration in announcing plans to help
consumers link to pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere.
Opponents of reimportation have argued that it would open America's
borders to a flood of tainted drugs, and that the FDA could not
guarantee the safety or purity of such imported drugs. That argument
isn't convincing. Many drugs are manufactured abroad, and the FDA
inspects those factories and ensures that drugs are shipped to America
without tampering. That system could be expanded, using fees paid by
those who import or export the drugs.
Pfizer execs are asserting that Rost "has no qualifications to speak on
importation" and emphasize that he is not speaking for the company. But
his support for reimportation resonates in Illinois, where 67 percent of
registered voters support Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to help residents
buy prescription drugs from Canada, Ireland and England, according to a
recent Tribune/WGN-TV poll. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation
showed about 8 in 10 Medicare recipients support allowing Americans to
buy drugs from Canada if they can get a lower price. The same study
showed more than 6 in 10 don't believe such a system would expose
Americans to unsafe medicines from other countries.
It seems terribly clear that congressional leaders have one intention
here: protecting their heavy campaign contributors in the drug industry
from competition. This issue deserves a vote. The stalling has to stop.
[Homestead] Protecting drug companies from price competition,
Tvoivozhd, 10/01/2004