HealthBeat FYI: Canadian Drugs, Eh?

May 11, 2007

The following are excerpts from Kim Strassel's excellent "Potomac Watch" column in today's Wall Street Journal:

Listen to Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe discuss importing drugs from Canada, and you'll hear endless happy talk about "more competitive prices," "substantial savings" and how "crucial" reimportation is to "the American consumer."

Interesting that, since Portland was one of those cities that gained notoriety a few years back for defying federal law and setting up a Canada import program that it promised would save its thousands of city employees and their dependents a bundle on drugs. Three years in, it has attracted all of 350 participants.

Three years ago, grandstanding governors and mayors vowed to break federal law and set up state-run drug import programs, giving millions of citizens the "opportunity" to buy cheap Canadian drugs. Today, most state-import programs are on life support, while some have closed completely. Never mind all Washington's hifalutin arguments about intellectual property, free trade and safety; the overwhelming majority of Americans appear to have little use for import programs that offer few drugs at long wait times, under suspect safety conditions and with minimal savings.

All of which helps explain this week's bizarre, and highly cynical, Senate votes on drug imports. Many of the very senators who supported or co-sponsored Ms. Snowe's amendment to change federal law and allow Canadian imports hail from states that have seen their own high-profile programs wither or die. That includes Wisconsin's Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, Missouri's Claire McCaskill and Dick Durbin of Illinois.

"This is nothing but political posturing," Joseph Bruno, the former Republican minority leader in Maine's legislature, says of the U.S. Senate debate. He also notes that many of the infamous "bus trips" from Maine to Canada were in fact ginned up by labor unions that wanted to elevate drug prices into a political issue, and that successfully left the false impression that Americans were falling all over themselves for Canadian meds. "If you look at the numbers, that's just not the case."

Still, don't expect the political caterwauling over imports to go away any time soon. There's still too much political upside to talking up a program that few Americans really want to use.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117885010291199521.html?mod=Potomac+Watch  (subscription required)