A prescription drug bill in the U.S. Senate will sound familiar to Mainers who watched this state lead the nation in slowing the rise in costs of essential medications. Congress, which will be playing for considerably higher stakes, is looking to Canada for help, but could find relief right at home.

The bill is not identical to the one brought last legislative session by state Sen. Chellie Pingree, but it is close. Rather than set drugs according to the much lower prices charged in Canada, as the Pingree bill originally would have done, the Senate bill would allow Americans — individuals, pharmacists and wholesalers — to purchase the lower-cost drugs in Canada, reducing costs by 30 percent or 40 percent.

The Senate bill is sponsored by senators from Minnesota (Sen. Paul Wellstone), Vermont (Sen. Jim Jeffords) and Maine (Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins), states where residents cannot help noticing the disparity in prices between prescription drugs in their hometowns and the same drugs in towns just across the border. Border-state residents wanting — needing — these lower-priced medications have been crossing the border buy them illegally. The MEDS Act would make their trips legal, and because it includes wholesalers and pharmacists, the act could let all U.S. residents, not just those in the north, find savings in Canada.

The bill also sounds similar to a proposal by U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, who wants the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare receivers. The Senate bill, called the Medicine Equity and Drug Safety (MEDS) Act, differs in that it relies on the Canadian government, rather than the U.S. government, to do the negotiating. That makes the results more roundabout, though it has the advantage of covering more people.

But the legislation may also make people wonder why they have to go to Canada to get these sorts of savings. If the senators approve of the way the Canadian government negotiates prices with pharmaceutical companies, they should direct the U.S. federal government to negotiate in the same manner. (If they don’t approve, they have no business encouraging Americans to support the Canadian system.) Besides, parts of the federal government — Medicaid and the VA for instance — already negotiate prices, as do HMOs. And under the new state legislation, that’s the way the state of Maine will do it starting January 2001.

Many in Congress despise the idea of negotiating prices — the dreaded price controls — but the disparity in prices between the United States and Canada, or the United States and every other industrialized nation, make them impossible to ignore. The common refrain now is that U.S. consumers should stop subsidizing pharmaceutical research and development for the rest of the world. The Senate plan offers a kind of arms-length approach to ending that subsidy.

Sen. Jeffords was perhaps aware of this aspect in his bill when, in announcing it May 9, he said, “I have said before and I will say again, this is not the only solution, and it may not be the best solution to this problem.” Indeed, a drug discount should be accompanied by drug coverage to ensure that everyone can afford to buy essential medications. Sen. Snowe, who calls the MEDS Act an interim step, has introduced legislation to do this, and has gained substantial support.

But it remains an obvious flaw in the act that senators would in effect cede to Canada the job of reining in prescription-drug costs in the United States. It might make Canada Joe even prouder of his country, but it isn’t the Senate’s finest hour.