Taking On BigDrugCo

[Timber Loftis]

August 17, 2004
Illinois to Help Residents Buy Drugs From Canada, and Afar
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO, Aug. 16 - Opening a new front in the fight over the cost of prescription drugs, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois is preparing to help residents of his state buy cheaper medicines from Britain and Ireland, as well as Canada.

Aides to Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, said he would announce on Tuesday that Illinois would create a program, accessible on the Internet, so people could buy 100 of the most common drugs for 25 percent to 50 percent less than in most American drugstores.

Federal authorities say it is illegal to buy drugs from outside the United States, but since early this year, officials in at least four other states - Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Wisconsin - have set up Web sites that link residents to Canadian pharmacies. Expanding the market to Britain and Ireland, Mr. Blagojevich's aides said, will spread demand beyond Canada, where some suppliers have reported shortages of certain drugs.

"The drug companies have pretty aggressively been shutting supplies to Canada, and we want to ensure that the supply will meet the demand," Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Mr. Blagojevich, said. "Ultimately, they can't shut down supplies to the world to keep prices high in the United States."

William K. Hubbard, an associate commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, said Mr. Blagojevich's plan "sounds like yet another expansion of an effort to import unapproved drugs from foreign countries that will be illegal under U.S. law and will raise serious concerns on the part of the F.D.A."

The notion that Illinois was reaching even beyond Canada, Mr. Hubbard said, made matters worse. "The more they go into other countries, the more concerns we have," he said.

Illinois' move is the latest in what has become a political and economic standoff over how Americans buy their drugs: the F.D.A. and drug companies contend that medications from other countries may be counterfeit, mislabeled or otherwise unsafe, while a growing number of local and state officials argue that their residents must be allowed to buy the least expensive drugs.

Illinois plans to contract with a Canadian company to create a clearinghouse of more than 35 approved pharmacies and wholesalers in Canada, Ireland and Britain. The state hopes to first reach the estimated 2.8 million Illinois residents who have no prescription drug coverage. If only 100,000 of them bought drugs through the clearinghouse, they would save as much as $29 million a year, Ms. Ottenhoff said.

Wanda Moebius, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents drug makers, said Illinois would not be able to guarantee that drugs said to be from Britain or Ireland really came from there. "We have serious safety concerns," Ms. Moebius said.

The Illinois program is designed for state residents only. Customers will have to provide billing and shipping addresses in the state.

Minnesota, the first state to start a Web site, in late January, had 117,000 visitors to its site by the end of July. Other states are using different methods to press for change. Vermont authorities have announced that they plan to sue the F.D.A. for rejecting their plan to bring Canadian drugs to their residents.

"On this issue, you can see the waves lapping up at the fortress," said Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics. "The question is, What will they do about these waves?"

The F.D.A. considers it illegal to buy drugs, or cause the sale of drugs, from other countries, but so far the agency has not taken legal action against states with Web sites that help people get drugs from abroad.

Mr. Hubbard said he could not say whether the agency might take legal action against Illinois because he had not seen details of its plan.

[Magness]

And any governor who creates such a program should be arrested for violating federal law. And I do not care what party they belong to. This is no different than what the San Francisco mayor was doing when he violated state law and issued marriage licenses to gay couples.

Just as a mayor doesn't have the authority to violate state law, a governor doesn't have the legal right/authority to violate federal law.

Arrest their asses.

[Timber Loftis]

Glad my governor didn't see it that way, Magness. I understand -- you're just upset that another BigGovernment BigGiveaway to BigDrug got challenged. Okay, snipes aside, did you notice this bit:

Mr. Hubbard said he could not say whether the agency might take legal action against Illinois because he had not seen details of its plan.

You can do the plan legally. Minnesota did. If it was so obviously illegal, they would arrest people for it, and companies wouldn't collude to do it. It's not as black/white as one rogue mayor ignoring the law and approving marriages only to have them all annulled (just this last week, in fact).

The problem is it is illegal to sell non-FDA approved drugs here, but it isn't illegal for you the citizen to buy them elsewhere in most instances.

And, let's be real -- do we really need the FDA to tell us drugs coming from Ireland and Canada are safe? I, for one, trust Canada and Ireland more than I trust the FDA, especially since I know the FDA is a shill for the food and drug companies. An FDA-specialized attorney once summed it up nicely to me: "Please, it's not like we can expect to *know* what's really in our food." I think that sums up the FDA nicely -- they're simply wankers.

[ 08-17-2004, 06:14 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Magness]

For me, it's not a matter of trusting the FDA vs Canada.

These countries with socialist medicine are artificially depressing the drug prices and forcing the drug companies to make up the difference on the backs of the American consumer. And these governments are holding the threat of simply ignoring the patents and letting a local company make these drugs. The drug companiess have no real power to stop them. They've got the choice of making a few pennies on the dollar or nothing at all.

I'm not saying that the drug companies are lily white pure. But when comparing them to socialist policies, I'll take the capitalists every time.

If these god-damned socialist countries were not artificially holding down drug prices, the prices would reach their appropriate level.

However, the current situation basically ends up with the American consumer having to fund the cost of all of the drug research and the god-damned socialist countries are essentially stealing the result.

[Aerich]

My god-damned socialist country shells out a lot of money to help people pay their inflated drug costs. I'm not weeping for the companies, they make a good profit off of us, too.

[Djinn Raffo]

Originally posted by Magness: These countries with socialist medicine are artificially depressing the drug prices and forcing the drug companies to make up the difference on the backs of the American consumer.

The drug companies are making profits here in Soviet Canuckistan. The only reason you pay more down south is because you let them get away with it.

[Timber Loftis]

If they will sell in Canada for 60% of what they do here, they will sell here for the same amount.

Threatening to take away R&D is a hollow threat if ever I heard one. Let them! Then, all the new medicine will come out of universities. The big R&D these days doesn't go to necessary drugs anyway, it goes into consumer-demand drugs like Viagara/Lavitra.

Socialistic market practices not only drive costs down, they can also drive them up. We have our fair share of socialistic market practices here as well, ours just drive prices up.

What do you think the FDA approval regs are if not socialism affecting the market? It's still socialistic -- just because the government is in bed with big business rather than whacking big business in the name of "the people" doesn't mean it's not socialism.

[Magness]

Originally posted by Djinn Raffo: quote: Originally posted by Magness: These countries with socialist medicine are artificially depressing the drug prices and forcing the drug companies to make up the difference on the backs of the American consumer.

The drug companies are making profits here in Soviet Canuckistan. The only reason you pay more down south is because you let them get away with it. [/QUOTE]No, you are getting your drugs at an artificially low cost because *I* end up paying for the R&D costs. And I am sick and tired of having to carry you on my back, you bleeping socialist bleepity-bleeps.

[Timber Loftis]

As I said, you are not carrying R&D costs on your back. What you are carrying on your back are the high prices of price fixing that result from your government and the companies colluding to prevent you from shopping for the best price. As a consumer, you become a "price taker" rather than a "price setter" under the classic Smith S/D curve. Socialist is socialist is socialist, and in this case the FDA is as bleepity-bleep and those bleepin bleepity-bleeps.

I wholeheartedly agree with putting a little capitalist common sense to this problem. My question is are you? I don't think you are. You're just spouting the party line. C'mon, use that noggin here. There are a lot of different socialistic hands at work in this market model, and you can't bitch about one and not the others.

[ 08-18-2004, 02:44 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Magness]

TL, if you want to put some capitalist common sense into the "problem" then the socialist countries should remove their grubby hands from the drug companies and let the drug prices find their natural level.