[Ip-health] Canada fires back at Hastert for drug-pricing remarks

[James Love]

http://www.thehill.com/story.asp?id=3D155

Canada fires back at Hastert for drug-pricing remarks
  By Bob Cusack


The Canadian government has fired back at House Speaker J. Dennis
Hastert (R-Ill.) for claiming that Canada threatens to steal the patents
of American drug companies in order to negotiate lower drug prices.

In a strongly worded Dec. 16 letter to Hastert, Canada=92s Ambassador to
the United States Michael Kergin objected to a number of the Speaker=92s
assertions on drug pricing.

Hastert met last week with the U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan and
drug company executives in order to better understand the price
disparity between drugs sold in Canada and drugs sold in the United States.

Following the meeting, Hastert issued a press release that got Canada=92s
attention. Hastert said, "It is wrong that our friends in Canada use
threats to steal the patents of American drug companies in order to
negotiate lower prices, and their price control regime is unfair to
American consumers. Americans shouldn=92t be forced to
subsidize the health care for the rest of the world."

Kergin=92s response, which was copied to Zoellick, McClellan and the
pharmaceutical industry, refutes several of Hastert=92s assertions. It
says Canada does not attempt to steal patents from American drug
companies and claims that since 1991, Canada has offered these firms
strong intellectual property protections.

"Drug companies that do not want to sell their pharmaceuticals in Canada
are certainly free not to," Kergin wrote. "Overwhelmingly, though, they
choose to operate =96 profitably =96 in Canada."

Hastert called last week=92s meeting because he is looking to find a
solution on drug pricing. Some in Congress have advocated reimporting
drugs from Canada and other countries but Hastert opposes this legislation.

"The American people are rightfully outraged at the disparity in prices
in drugs sold in the United States and in Canada," Hastert said.

Reimportation seems like a viable solution, Hastert added, but "in
reality it is a false promise. The economics just don=92t work. The demand
in America for prescription drugs is far too big to be filled by
reimported drugs from Canada."

In his letter to Hastert, Kergin noted that Canada has not taken a
position on whether the United States should reimport drugs. However, he
took exception with Hastert=92s suggestion that Canada=92s drug prices are
subsidized by American consumers.



--
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:james.love@cptech.org
tel. +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040