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Bush Administration Gives Mixed View on Drug Imports
By Robert Pear, The New York Times
December 22, 2004
The Bush administration said Tuesday that commercial importation of some low-cost prescription drugs from Canada might be feasible. But the savings to consumers would be small, it said, and the federal government would have to spend hundreds of million dollars a year to ensure the drugs'
safety.
The administration said in a report to Congress that legalizing imports would probably hurt the development of new drugs for Americans.
The report was released amid growing support for laws on importing drugs. Republican proponents include Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Trent Lott of Mississippi; Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota; and Representative Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, as well as several newly elected members of Congress.
Sponsors of bills to legalize drug imports said they would keep pushing for it in the new Congress.
"I never had much confidence that this study was going to be objective," said the sponsor of one bill, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.
Ms. Snowe said the administration had "failed to provide any meaningful recommendations" to Congress.
The conclusions of the report are generally consistent with studies by the drug industry, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Congressional Budget Office. Many economists and health care experts say importing drugs from countries that control their prices would do little to solve the problem of expensive drugs here.
On the other hand, consumer groups like AARP and some drugstore executives, including the chairman of CVS, have said commercial imports would be much safer than the current flood of largely unregulated imports by individuals.
Even though President Bush, whose administration resisted the idea during his first term, hinted in the presidential campaign that he might soon allow imports from Canada, the report catalogued many reasons they would be risky.
Americans could save more, it said, by increasing the use of generic drugs.
The report, by a 13-member federal panel, ruled out legalizing individual imports of drugs for personal use as unworkable. But it said that commercial imports by wholesalers and pharmacies, under strict regulation, might be feasible.
"A commercial importation scheme could be feasible with adequate resources and authorities," said the panel, headed by Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona. "However, it would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve this result if personal importation were legalized."
Regulating personal imports would cost $3 billion a year, whereas commercial imports could be regulated at an annual cost of several hundred million dollars, Dr. Carmona said.
The report, from the Health and Human Services Department, said new technology, including tiny radio frequency identification tags, could enhance safety by tracking imports as they moved from overseas to American pharmacies. Some means of importing, like going to Canada to buy drugs, "may be relatively safe in specific instances," and, "Some individuals may enjoy significant savings," the report said.
But administration officials said the United States must not allow two tiers of regulation, with lower standards for imports than for drugs made here.
"Safety should not be sacrificed for affordability," said the report, which Congress required in the new Medicare law.
In a letter sending the report to Congress on Tuesday, the administration said that any legalization plan "must be limited to commercial importation of a discrete number of high-volume, high-cost prescription drugs" and that "Canada is the only country from which importation should be considered at this point."
The report provides authoritative estimates of the volume of imports.
"Nearly five million shipments, comprising about 12 million prescription drug products with a value of approximately $700 million, entered the United States from Canada alone in 2003," it said. The report said that a similar quantity of drugs was coming from the rest of the world, through the mail and couriers.
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