While Congress was trying to decide whether to encourage Americans to save money on prescription drugs by shopping in Canada and the Bush administration was trying to persuade the Canadian government to stop the exporting, Canadian pharmacy regulators asked their government to temporarily exclude Americans from making purchases there. The pharmacists cited a fear of shortages in Canada if the current trend toward cross-border shopping continued. In Washington, Congress should feel deep embarrassment over this turn of events: It refuses to guarantee coverage or negotiate lower prices for its elderly who need medication and now some of its neighbors say they can’t carry the burden any longer.

Even the drug-reimportation provisions within the contested Medicare reform depend on the approval of the administration, which objects to the idea because of supposed safety issues. Yet the pill-buying public can see that Canadians do just fine with their lower-priced drugs. U.S. consumers – approximately 1.2 million this year – apparently have decided that they are tired of subsidizing the rest of the world’s prescription drugs and want some of those savings.

Members of Congress are having a hard time understanding this. Every time they seem to grasp the costly problem with the current tax- and consumer-subsidized system, they become timid and confused under the influence of drug lobbyists. It’s a strange malady they suffer, though their campaign bank accounts seem healthier than ever.

Even small, sensible steps like one proposed by Rep. Tom Allen run into trouble. Earlier this year, Rep. Allen offered, with bipartisan support, a bill to spend $75 million on comparative drug-effectiveness studies by the National Institutes of Health and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Given the amount of money drug companies spend on marketing claims for their products and the seriousness of the illnesses treated through prescription drugs, a public comparison of what works should be welcomed by Congress. Just a few months ago, several news stories described the similarities between heartburn medication Prilosec, sold inexpensively as a generic drug and soon to be sold over the counter, and its expensive successor Nexium.

Knowing when the less-expensive version was appropriate could save millions of dollars. Instead the comparison study remains in committee, hidden away so the public won’t see that Congress doesn’t want the public to know that some high-priced drugs work no better than less costly ones.

Whether it passes a Medicare bill this week or delays its vote to allow for proper debate, the question of drug costs will remain. Canada could eventually adjust to selling Americans lower-cost drugs but relying on another nation to act as a pharmacy benefits manager for the general public is no way to make policy.

Congress should help Americans afford their prescription drugs the same way much of the developed world does, through price negotiation. Because it refuses this sensible step, it should at least provide a comparison of top drugs to help consumers choose the less-overpriced option.