[Pharm-policy] William Raspberry on Parallel Imports: Re-Import and Save

[James Love]

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40915-2000Sep28.html

Re=Import and Save

By William Raspberry  Friday, September 29, 2000; Page A33 
                      Washington Post

There are at least two pieces of the problem of the high cost of
prescription drugs, Rep. Bernie Sanders has been saying for some time
now.

But most of the political and journalistic focus has been on only one
piece: The "outrageously high price" both seniors and nonseniors alike
have to pay for their medications.
  
The independent congressman from Vermont would like to call attention to
the other half of the problem: the fact that Americans "are paying by
far the highest prices in the world for the same exact drug--not a
generic, but the same exact drug."
 
The solution, he says, is simplicity itself. Allow registered
pharmacists and drug distributors to purchase FDA-approved drugs
anywhere in the world for resale here. Re-importation, he calls it in
the bill he hopes will pass Congress before the campaign recess.

That could be as early as a week from today.

"This is important stuff," Sanders said in a telephone interview from
his Burlington office. "I traveled to Canada with a group of women with
breast cancer, and we looked at the price of tamoxifen, a drug that is
widely prescribed for the treatment of breast cancer. You could get it
in Canada at a tenth of the U.S. price.

"If this bill were to go into effect tomorrow, U.S. pharmacies would be
purchasing tamoxifen in Canada and retailing it here at 30 to 50 percent
less than they now charge."

Sanders says the same thing applies in any number of countries with any
number of drugs--all approved by the FDA and originally manufactured in
or exported from the United States.

"Pharmacies should be able to purchase these drugs the same way other
companies purchase shoes, slacks or washing machines," he says.

Is his proposal an attempt to derail legislation calling for a
prescription drug benefit, at least for senior citizens? Both Democrats
and Republicans seem determined to pass such legislation as a way of
combating the high cost of medicine.

"There's no conflict there," Sanders insists. "Even if we were able
through my bill to lower the cost of prescription drugs 30 to 50
percent, we would still need the prescription drug benefit. I support
that."

Indeed, he argues, his proposal, whose basic concept already has cleared
both houses of Congress as part of an agricultural appropriations bill,
would make the other legislation more effective. For example, a
Democratic bill would require a Medicare beneficiary to pay $288 of the
first $1,000 in prescription costs, and half of the next $1,000.
Allowing re-importation would make it possible for Medicare to cover up
to 80 percent of prescription costs "just because, with lowered costs,
there'd be more money to go around."

So who could oppose such a simple notion?

Some early opposition was based on fear that unsafe or bogus drugs would
be brought into the States. The Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has run ads warning that re-importation
would "result in adulterated, spoiled and counterfeit drugs in America's
medicine cabinets."

But former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler, who earlier opposed
re-importation for just that reason, said recently he's been satisfied
that limiting re-importation to drugs already approved by the FDA and
manufactured in FDA-approved facilities would eliminate that hazard.
Sanders says batch testing of the re-imports should cost between $800
and $3,000 per batch, an "insignificant" additional cost to batches of
drugs "worth hundreds of thousands to millions each."

The biggest obstacle to passage this term is the pharmaceutical
industry, Sanders said. "They are the most powerful lobbying force on
Capitol Hill," he said. "They've spent tens of millions in opposition of
this bill. They have 300 paid lobbyists and funneled $6 million to the
Republicans and $3 million to the Democrats. That's $9 million in
political contributions we're going up against."

And his best hope for passage? "This is the issue that is of the most
concern to the people and to members of Congress. Both parties want to
go home saying we did something about the high cost of prescriptions."
   
-- 
James Love  mailto:love@cptech.org http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
voice 1.202.387.8030  fax  1.202.234.5176