The Washington Post had an article earlier this week where experts questioned whether or not allowing imported drugs would result in significant saving for US customers.
Expert Questions Import Drug Savings - washingtonpost.com
Stephen Schondelmeyer, a University of Minnesota pharmaceutical economist testified that imports would cut U.S. prices by only 12 percent to 20 percent (emphasis mine). I’m not sure what this economist think is significant but for many people on fixed incomes who are paying hundreds or dollars (or more) each month for prescription drugs this is indeed significant! I think it may again be a case of someone in an ivory tower not being in touch with some of the concerns of normal everyday people.
As regular readers know though, this doesn’t mean I favor drug imports. I also don’t think the safety issue usually raised is insurmountable, but it would be costly and I doubt congress would increase the FDA budget enough to allow it to do this job thoroughly and safely. My disfavor of this approach is simply based on populations of the listed countries. Usually this list includes Canada, New Zealand, Australia and some European countries (but never specifically identified).
Excluding Europe for now (I’ll comment on that below) these other countries are so small in population that the US, if even a small percentage of people imported drugs, it would easily strip them of their supplies. Also, some drug companies have already stated that if this occurs, they will only sell certain amounts of drugs to these countries and they would have to decide whether to sell them to their own people or export them to the US but that the drug companies would not allow the purchase of huge amounts of drugs just so those countries could export them to the US.
It should also be noted that in Europe, drug companies must negotiate prices directly with the government since in most cases they are the sole healthcare provider (this could be looked at as another reason why the US should seriously consider universal healthcare, but that’s another subject for another time). If you ask people on the street here in the US if they favor price controls on drugs, most will say no. However, this is basically what would occur. Importing drugs from Europe would essentially be saying we agree with the price controls of foreign governments. If we truly believe that, then why not just pass legislation with price controls tied to those in Europe?
My larger concern is that Congress has a history of giving the FDA additional responsibility but has not given them an increase in funding to achieve those responsibilities. They are already underfunded by most experts estimates and setting up a new system to deal with drug imports would be costly at least at first. Then there are other issues Congress wants the FDA to deal with such as biogenerics and a drug safety database. This is one of the reasons I favor giving the FDA powers similar to the EPA of fining drug companies for infractions of the rules.
The bill being discussed is S424 (S. 242–110th Congress (2007): Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2007
Technorati Tags: drug cost, drug imports, drug price
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