Importing Drugs Seen as a Way to Lower Costs

Legalizing the importation of U.S.-made drugs from other countries, while not a long-term solution to the problem of high-priced prescription drugs, is an important first step in making medicines more affordable, consumer advocates told a government task force Friday.

Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona opened the first of six “listening sessions” by acknowledging that “the eyes of the nation are on this task force.” The Bush administration is under increasing political pressure from lawmakers, governors, mayors and millions of Americans who buy their drugs from Canada illegally to legalize such imports.

Reflecting the administration’s anti-importation stance, Carmona, chairman of the 13-member panel, said his job is to “protect the American people,” who “must understand that the government has no way to certify” that imported drugs are safe.

The advocates, who represented groups ranging from the Minnesota Senior Federation, which runs a drug-importation program for 6,000 people, to the 35 million-member AARP, also spoke of safety.

“Drugs that are not affordable are neither safe nor effective,” said Alison Rein of the National Consumers League.

“There is a growing recognition that not being able to afford needed prescription drugs is a threat to the health of the American people,” said Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis for Consumers Union. “There are tens of thousands of deaths a year because people are not getting the needed drugs.”

The Food and Drug Administration already has much of the regulatory authority it needs to guarantee the safety of prescription drugs, whether they are made and sold in the United States or made here, shipped abroad, then sold to Americans by mail order, over the Internet or to patients bused to Canadian pharmacies, the advocates said.

The House passed legislation last year to legalize drug importation. But many senators opposed the measure, and they blocked efforts to include a drug-importation provision in the Medicare prescription drug bill. That law simply requires Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson to study the issue and report to Congress by Dec. 1.

Thompson, who named the task force members this week, said he hoped the panel would complete its work by midsummer.

The newfound urgency is largely a result of election-year politics. After Congress passed the Medicare reform law, which prohibits the government from negotiating directly with drug manufacturers for lower prices, Democratic presidential candidates discovered that high drug prices were a potent political issue.

Carmona and the consumer advocates said they, too, have found the issue to be a hot one, especially for retired Americans, who are less likely than current workers to have health insurance that covers prescription drugs.

“We can’t go to any part of the country where we don’t hear people complaining about the high cost of drugs,” said David Certner, AARP’s director of federal affairs.

Those complaints also have reached members of Congress, and in recent weeks several Republican and Democratic lawmakers have declared that they now support making drug importation legal if it can be done safely.

Members of the task force -- nine HHS officials and four employees of other government agencies -- did not express their views on the issue Friday. One member, outgoing FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan, has traveled the country to speak against drug importation and has threatened legal action against governors and mayors running their own importation programs. Thompson originally named McClellan to chair the task force. But he backed off after several senators who support importation threatened to hold up McClellan’s nomination as new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Over the next two months, the task force will hold four additional “listening sessions.” Consumers are invited to speak at a public hearing April 14.

For Peter T. Wyckoff, executive director of the Minnesota Senior Federation, there is no excuse for government inaction. His group began organizing drug-buying bus trips to Canada in 1995, and the next year his and senior groups in five other states began negotiating directly with Canadian pharmacies.

Prices negotiated by the groups on 13 different drugs were 62% lower than prices in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Wyckoff said. He told the task force that the Canadian drug supply is safer than that in the U.S.

“The issue is not about drug importation, it is not about prescription drug safety,” he said. “The issue is about the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans.”