DO NOT BLAME THY NEIGHBOR

Instead of addressing their criticism northward, Gov. John Baldacci and his colleagues should increase pressure on Washington to change this country’s drug-pricing policies. Five governors recently wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin asking him to not restrict his country’s exports of lower-cost drugs to the United States. Gov. Baldacci’s added concern became apparent during his State of the State when he described a Penobscot Nation plan to wholesale Canadian drugs, but it is the job of the U.S. government and Congress, not that of Canada, to safeguard American lives by making drugs more affordable.

The Canadian Health Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, has rightly raised concerns that his country is becoming “the drug store to the United States.” Americans are increasingly crossing the border to go to Canadian pharmacies or ordering Canadian drugs over the Internet. Because the Canadian government regulates drug prices as part of its national health care system, prices are often half that in the United States for the same medication. An estimated $1 billion worth of prescription drugs are sent from Canada

to the United States each year.

Drug companies have threatened to limit the supply of medications to Canadian pharmacies that are known to sell to American consumers.

Still, the governors of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and North Dakota joined Gov. Baldacci in pleading with Prime Minister Martin. “We believe it is imperative that the Canadian government realize the restriction of prescription drug supplies could mean the difference between life and death for many Americans,” they wrote. Ditto for the American government.

Rather than complain to Canadian government officials, the governors should collectively direct their ire at Washington and, specifically, call for negotiated prices, not re-importation schemes. The federal government already negotiates prices for medications for veterans and some cancer patients, and every other developed country does so.

Instead, Congress passed a Medicare reform that forbids the federal government from negotiating lower drug prices. Sen. Olympia Snowe introduced legislation last year that would give the health and human services secretary authority to negotiate lower drug prices for participants in the Medicare program. She plans to do so again this session.

“Drugs, if they’re not affordable, can’t be effective, and in my state just recently three individuals were hospitalized because they could not afford medication. So I think that the federal government needs to use every tool available to negotiate lower prices and to be in a position to leverage lower prices,” Sen. Snowe told former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, the HHS secretary-designate, during his confirmation hearing.

To paraphrase the governors, it is imperative that the American government, not Canada’s, realize the effects of the current policy and then change it.