Canadian Health Minister's Opposition Changes Cross-Border Pharmaceutical Trade
Posted on: Saturday, 9 July 2005, 09:00 CDT
Canadian Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh's decision to crack down on bulk cross-border prescription drug sales highlights an obvious point: America's problem with high drug costs must be solved by America.
Dosanjh's crackdown simply slows a Band-Aid approach to that problem, which deserves a full cure. Congress already has missed such a chance once, by refusing to allow Medicare to use its bulk- purchasing power to drive down costs.
Because drug costs are about 30 percent higher in the United States than they are in Canada, where prices are regulated, uninsured or underinsured Americans have been crossing the border to get prescriptions filled. That practice now has expanded to include not only bulk Internet sales but legislation -- now pending congressional approval -- for such purchases by municipalities and entire states seeking to save money in their health care insurance budgets.
That escalation worries Dosanjh, who has proposed a ban on cross- border sales of pharmaceuticals when Canadian supplies run low, limiting other bulk sales and changing the way Canadian doctors handle prescription co-signing.
He does not intend to attack personal purchases by Americans who cross the border for the pharmaceutical bargains that some people on fixed or limited incomes find absolutely essential. There would, however, be some tightening of rules for their prescriptions. Under current plans, Canadian doctors could not simply review an American diagnosis and co-sign a prescription as they can now, but would have to establish a still-unspecified form of personal interaction with a patient before prescribing.
Dosanjh has to balance concerns over domestic drug supplies and possibly unethical practices with care for a growing pharmaceutical industry that now employs 5,000 Canadians, so there will be negotiations before the final rules are set. That is an issue for Canadians to decide.
In the meantime, the United States should be doing more to deal with what is, after all, its own problem -- the escalating costs of medications developed by an industry that claims it needs higher prices here than in other price-regulated parts of the world so it can continue the costly and time-consuming job of developing even better medicines.
But good medicines do no good if they're not affordable, and the pharmaceutical industry remains a very profitable one that can put millions into brand-name advertising. There is room for change.
Source: Buffalo News
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