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Canadian Internet pharmacies may not be up for U.S. onslaught
NEW YORK (AP) - As CEO of Canadameds.com, one of the popular new enterprises selling low-price prescription drugs from Canada to U.S. customers, Mike Hicks is used to watching business grow fast.
But even he is unsure how he would respond if the city of Boston, which this week announced a plan to buy drugs from Canada, asked his firm to handle prescriptions for a pilot program open to roughly 7,000 of its current and retired employees?
``It would be exciting -- and frightening,'' said Hicks. ``That would be a lot of stress on our operation.''
Executives at Canadian pharmacies that sell drugs to Americans are watching with a mixture of delight and dread as more and more cities and states announce they are exploring purchasing drugs north of the border to save money.
While they want business to keep increasing, they aren't sure how to, or whether they could, handle a massive influx of new customers. They also don't want to taunt the pharmaceutical industry, which is already limiting supplies to Canada to discourage the sales.
This week, New Hampshire's state government announced plans to purchase some drugs from Canada. And representatives from a dozen states met with six Canadian drug companies in Atlanta to discuss business possibilities. So far, only Springfield, Mass., has a program that allows its employees to purchase Canadian drugs.
``I think even if half the people talking about buying from Canada did it, there would be problems,'' said Hicks, whose company is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
No one believes that Canadian Internet pharmacies are a long-term solution to soaring drug costs and the pressure felt by state and city budgets. At some point -- and no one knows when -- availability will become an issue: There are only 31 million people in Canada, and there is no way drug companies will ship enough medicine there to supply possibly millions of American state and city workers.
Some officials, like those in Boston, believe buying Canadian drugs will send a powerful message to federal regulators, requiring them to act before supply becomes a problem.
``The more states and cities that buy Canadian drugs, the more pressure on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to address the problem of the high cost of medication in this country,'' said John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission.
It is illegal for anyone but drug manufacturers to bring their products into the United States, and U.S. regulators have cracked down on some storefront operations. The FDA also says that the safety and quality of drugs imported from Canada can't be assured.
No one knows how many Americans are buying their drugs in Canada, where medicines are up to 50 percent cheaper because of government price controls. The number of pharmacies supplying cost-conscious Americans is also unclear, but is estimated to be between 80 and 100. Some are very small, so they probably could not supply a major city or state.
Since the beginning of the year, five drug companies announced they were limiting their supply to Canada to stop the drugs from being shipped back to American consumers. Some Canadian internet pharmacies have reported problems getting drugs.
``At the end of the day, getting supply is getting more difficult and expensive,'' said Hicks.
Al Kula, director of pharmacy services at Toronto-based Meds Via Canada, said he hasn't had any trouble obtaining drugs to sell his American clients because the company has a chain of 42 drug stores besides its Web site. He said the company fills about 3,000 prescriptions a day, and could go up to 10,000 without too much of a problem.
Yet Kula says it is difficult to say how many cities or states he could service. Both Kula and Hicks say their ability to service new clients depends on how many people would want to buy their drugs from Canada, and what kind of medicine those people take.
Hicks said he would need to know that before making any major commitment to expanding the business. He and Kula fear that if the Canadian business grows exponentially, drug companies will take even more drastic measures to cut supply and they don't want to put Canadian clients in jeopardy.
``I don't want to cause a drug shortage,'' Hicks said.
If the drug companies did cut off Canada, the government could break patents and allow generic production, Kula said. But he's not sure either the companies or Canada wants to get to that point.
It is unclear that it will. The states that sent representatives to the Atlanta meeting haven't committed to buying drugs from Canada for several reasons. Among them: the federal rules prohibiting it, and concerns that a reliable supply could be assured.
``It is still a cottage industry,'' said Jill Floode, special assistant for health policy to Delaware's budget director. ``I think the companies are going to have to decide whether they want to make it take hold.''
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New Gallup Poll indicates that 71% of Americans favor legal Canadian drug reimportation.
Finally, 7 in 10 Americans (71%) say Congress and the president should make it legal for Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada and other countries outside the United States. Just 28% disagree.
As you may know, many Americans now buy prescription drugs from Canada, even though the practice is illegal, because the drugs are cheaper there than in the United States. Do you think Congress and the president should -- or should not -- make it legal for Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada and other countries outside the U.S.?
| 2003 Aug 25-26 |
Yes, should
make it legal |
No,
should not |
No
opinion |
| 71% |
28 |
1 |
This is only an excerpt from the article. Click here to view it in its entirety.
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Editorial - Foreign drugs meet a need that U.S. has ignored
Five years ago, U.S. residents who bought lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada were mainly seniors along the border who made bus trips in search of affordable medicines. Today, the practice is a booming, if illegal, business. About 1 million U.S. consumers buy Canadian drugs, and dozens of storefronts have sprung up from California to Massachusetts offering to arrange purchases that now exceed $1 billion a year.
The willingness of so many individuals and last month, even the Springfield, Mass., municipal government to defy a federal law against buying foreign drugs dramatizes the growing rebellion over a system that forces U.S. consumers to pay the highest drug prices in the world.
Even if the House and Senate can agree on the specifics of a Medicare drug benefit for seniors when Congress reconvenes next month, it won't help the millions of others who can't afford needed medicines.
Yet instead of working on constructive ways to address the problem, the drug industry and its richly rewarded political allies in Washington are fighting grassroots solutions such as Canadian purchases. Among the industry's obstructionist tactics: Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, last week became the latest supplier to limit or cut off sales of its products to Canadian pharmacies that continue filling U.S. orders.
Under industry pressure, the Food and Drug Administration is threatening legal action against for-profit or volunteer groups that help patients fill out forms to meet Canada's prescription requirements.
Programs launched by states to reduce the cost of drugs for their residents have been tied up in lawsuits by the industry. The industry says its large profit margins finance the costly development of new drugs, which could not be funded under the government price controls imposed in Canada and most other industrial countries. The industry is correct about the importance of funding research. Yet its big profits also funded the $26 million in political donations that drugmakers made in the last election. And they paid the salaries of 600 lobbyists who are fighting efforts to expand the federal government's power to negotiate lower drug prices.
The FDA says foreign drugs are more likely to be unsafe or counterfeit. Yet while some foreign purchases entail greater risks, the Congressional Research Service concluded in 2001 and again this year that drug-safety rules in Canada are at least as strong as those in the U.S. No cases of counterfeit drugs have surfaced in Canada for more than a decade. Even Congress is belatedly recognizing that buying drugs from Canada can make sense. In a setback for the industry and House GOP leaders, 87 Republicans voted with 155 Democrats on July 25 to legalize drug purchases from Canada and 24 other nations with high quality-control standards.
Clearly, filling prescriptions in Canada is not a long-term solution to the problem of drug affordability in the USA. For one thing, Canada's supply network is much too small to meet the huge potential demand from south of the border.
But until the industry and Washington tackle the problem, they can't be surprised that Canadian drug purchases are a popular temporary solution for U.S. consumers.
Original Source: Click here
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