|
Cross-border
pharmacies boom
Internet
businesses supply U.S. customers with lower-priced Canadian drugs
By:
Tom Cohen
The
Oakland Tribune, January
27, 2003
A few
months ago, Dave Robertson had eight employees in the 800-square-foot
office of his new Internet pharmacy business.
Today,
Robertson's crossborderpharmacy.com has 150 workers and 20,000 square feet
of office space, serving an ever-expanding customer base that he says
numbers close to 100,000 -- nearly all of them U.S. consumers seeking
cheaper Canadian medicine.
Scores
of new, rapidly growing Canadian operations are filling prescriptions sent
from south of the border, capitalizing on the disparity of drug prices
between the North American neighbors.
The
business worries pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline Inc., which
wants to shut down operations like Robertson's.
Drug
makers, as well as regulators, say they worry about the proper medical
supervision and quality controls.
Canada
regulates drug prices as part of its national health care system, while
the market dictates pricing in the United States.
Many
popular medications for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and
high cholesterol can be bought in Canada at less than half the U.S. price.
Rough
estimates put the number of Canadian companies in the business at 80 or
more, and total annual revenues are believed to be as high as $650
million.
Precise
figures are unavailable because the companies are privately held and the
situation changes daily.
Just
ask Robertson, 39, a pharmacist who designed industry software until
realizing the potential of reaching a U.S. market of aging citizens with
diminishing medical insurance benefits and coverage.
He
started crossborderpharmacy.com last fall in Calgary, and it has blossomed
into separate departments for receiving telephone and Internet queries,
filing information, consulting with U.S. doctors and patients, and filling
and shipping orders.
One
50-by-30-foot room used to hold most of the administrative departments.
Soon it will become an addition to the dispensary, where pharmacists and
their technicians fill orders in plastic bags for shipment to the United
States.
"Basically
we cut a hole and move a wall and we have another dispensary,"
Robertson said. "It's an evolution. It's a never-ending
process."
He
might as well have been talking about the entire industry, which has taken
the traditional mail-order system of delivering medicine to rural areas
and applied it to a much more lucrative cross-border business.
Lower
Canadian drug prices have attracted U.S. customers for years, with
busloads of senior citizens from communities near the border making
weekend trips to Canada to stock up.
Manitoba
pharmacists were the first to market by Internet, extending service far
beyond bordering states. Ronald Guse, registrar of the Manitoba
Pharmaceutical Association, said Wednesday the latest figures indicate
there are about 40 such operations in the province.
The
flow of drugs to the United States is raising the potential for problems
in supply to Canadians, Guse said. A rural hospital lost its pharmacist to
one of the new operations, creating a vacancy difficult to fill, he said.
Guse's
association is studying possible guidelines for prescriptions to make sure
they are valid under Canadian regulations.
The
Canadian companies generally have Canadian-licensed doctors who rewrite
U.S. prescriptions submitted by Americans, satisfying regulatory
requirements in most provinces.
Some
provinces, including Manitoba, require doctors writing prescriptions to
personally consult with patients, and Guse questioned how that can be done
by a physician handling hundreds of prescriptions a day.
At
crossborderpharmacy.com, there are five or more pharmacists on duty at any
one time to oversee prescriptions, and the company tries to contact every
customer by phone, Robertson said.
"We
require a U.S. prescription. We do have the U.S. prescription reviewed by
a Canadian physician to have it rewritten, but you cannot purchase
medication here without having a primary care U.S. physician," he
said.
GlaxoSmithKline,
citing concerns about proper medical supervision, has told the Canadian
wholesalers and retailers it supplies that they must provide assurances
they are not selling drugs to the United States. If they don't, Glaxo will
stop supplying them.
It
originally set a Jan. 21 deadline for complying but backed off Tuesday,
saying it was working on a plan to ensure that customers still get enough
drugs for Canadian consumers.
In
response, Canadian pharmacies have banded together in associations and
threatened lawsuits alleging unfair practices and trade violations. They
say the issue is not quality of care but the money that GlaxoSmithKline
sees going to Canadian companies.
Dave
Adams, 56, who lives in the Los Angeles area and gets his Zocor medicine
for high cholesterol from crossborderpharmacy.com, is like many U.S.
consumers who dismiss product safety concerns.
The
Zocor he gets from Canada is made by the same company -- Merck -- that
made the supplies he used to buy in California. But now he pays $256 for a
90-day supply instead of $648.
"You
can say all those things you want, but my cholesterol is the same"
whether the prescription is filled in the United States or Canada, he
said.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use | Privacy
Policy | Contact Us
|
