Next stop, Canada

If nothing else, the fact that Northern New England governors are looking for a way to allow residents to save money by buying American-made prescription drugs in Canada gives the public a sense of the confused system of drug pricing. Their proposal is a free-market answer to a growing problem.

Govs. Angus King of Maine, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Howard Dean of Vermont met this week to discuss increasing health care costs, especially pharmaceutical costs. States have discovered there is a limited amount of change they can make on their own or even as a region. But rather than just sit in the waiting room and read old magazines until Congress gets serious about comprehensive reform, states are trying to heal themselves by getting creative.

For northern states, one answer is just across the border, where prescription drug prices are, on average 30 percent less expensive than here, and as much as 60 or 70 percent less. Same drugs in the same quantity, developed in the United States by the same manufacturer under the same federal oversight, but far lower prices. The temptation to try to save considerably by buying drugs in Canada is great, and many patients have done just that.

Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration frowns on those purchases. That’s where the governors come in. They are looking at the North American Free Trade Agreement for an avenue that would allow U.S. residents to import the less expensive drugs. The pharmaceutical lobby, which has been so effective in Washington during the last several years, would never allow that to happen, but the exercise is useful for a couple of reasons.

First, it calls attention to a pricing disparity — drugs by American manufacturers are cheaper just about anywhere else — and begs the question why.

Second, it organizes states in a way to be more effective in negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.

And, third, who knows? The Nafta angle might work and Mainers soon will be ordering their cholesterol medication from Quebec. The governors discussed more than just drug prices as the source of rapidly rising health-care costs and looked at purchasing pools and standardizing insurance regulations across the three states as ways to streamline paperwork. With Congress still unsure of what it will support, cooperation among the states is an encouraging sign in an ever-growing problem.