DRUG WAR:

Importing Less Expensive Drugs Not Seen as Cure for U.S. Woes: Experts say that importing drugs from countries that control their prices would not make drugs cheaper in the U.S. (EDUARDO PORTER, 10/16/04, NY Times)

It may make political sense to point to Canada as a solution to high prescription drug prices in the United States. But many economists and health care experts say that importing drugs from countries that control their prices would do little to solve the problem of expensive drugs in the United States, where companies are free to set their own prices. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that allowing Canadian drug imports would have a "negligible" impact on drug spending.

To begin with, there are not enough Canadians, or drugs in Canada, to make much of a dent in the United States. There are 16 million American patients on Lipitor, for instance - more than half the entire Canadian population.

Drug makers like Pfizer say they would reduce their shipments of drugs to distributors in Canada and other countries that re-export to the United States. "We are not going to supply drugs to diverters, in Canada or elsewhere," said Hank McKinnell, chairman and chief executive of Pfizer.

And Canadian health officials, fearing shortages and higher prices of their own, would probably clamp down on their own pharmacists and distributors to keep their drugs from leaking into the United States. Canadian patient-advocacy groups have already complained about shortages from the exports to the United States that already occur, even though they violate American law.

Even the most vehement advocates of forcing big drug makers to lower prices in this country say that imports are a rather clumsy tool. "It's a pretty crazy solution to a fairly simple problem," said James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a group advocating a lowering of drug costs. "Reimportation is not the first thing that would come to my mind."

But what comes to mind for people like Mr. Love is a political nonstarter: imposing Canadian-style price controls.

Conservatives should embrace reimportation as a way of crashing the Canadian system.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 16, 2004 9:46 AM