Drug industry rails against Canada sales

WASHINGTON – Drug-industry executives told House members Thursday that the United States shouldn’t allow Americans to get their prescriptions from pharmacies in Canada.

As prescription drug prices in the United States have climbed, Americans have begun looking for cheaper pharmaceuticals north of the border, where Canadian law places price controls on medicine.

But drug companies have become increasingly concerned about the number of Americans seeking the cheaper Canadian pharmaceuticals.

“Sending seniors across the border to get their prescription medicines is not the way to address concerns over cost and access here in the U.S.,” GlaxoSmithKline executive Christopher Viehbacher told a House panel on wellness and human rights.

Since it began in the 1990s, the U.S.-Canadian pharmaceutical trade has bloomed into a $1 billion-a-year business that now relies on chartered bus trips and Internet prescription brokers that link Americans who are far from the border to Canadian pharmacies that will ship medicines by mail.

Health insurance companies have even begun to ask the Food and Drug Administration whether it would be legal for them to pay for prescription drugs imported from Canada, a move that would reduce the cost to health plans.

Despite the ongoing cross-border pharmaceutical trade, federal law makes it illegal for Americans to bring any prescription medicines into the United States from Canada or any other nation.

Border agents rarely cite or arrest people crossing the border with personal supplies of prescription medicines, but the FDA has begun to distribute pamphlets at the border warning that Canadian drugs may not be identical to those sold in the United States. Drug manufacturers have long cited concerns about the safety of prescription drugs from other nations, saying that few countries have regulations that are as strict as those in the United States.

But lawmakers who hope to see prescription drugs from Canada become legal warned that Americans could also be at risk if they cannot afford the prescription drugs they need.

“I will tell you about another safety issue that needs to be addressed: There are millions of senior citizens who are suffering and sometimes dying because they cannot afford the astronomical cost of prescription drugs,” said Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who heads the Democratic prescription drug task force, dismissed concerns about the safety of drugs from Canada, calling them a smokescreen to protect industry profits.

“This is not a real issue,” she said. “The pharmaceutical drug companies have effectively been able to keep the border shut and the competition out that helps them keep their prices high.”

Congress passed a law allowing pharmaceutical reimportation in 2000, but the Clinton and Bush administrations have refused to allow it to take effect, saying that there is no way to ensure that the drugs are safe.

Stabenow said she and other lawmakers hope to add a provision allowing the importation of drugs from Canada to the prescription drug bill that the Senate will consider next week.

That proposal would allow pharmacies in the United States to buy Canadian pharmaceuticals at wholesale prices and sell them to Americans at prices up to 50 percent lower than the cost of U.S.-made drugs, Stabenow said.

Because Canada’s prescription-regulation system is similar to the United States’, Stabenow’s proposal would only allow drug reimportation from Canada and would not allow White House action to block the program.