Once just a trickle, Canada's Rx drugs pouring into USA

NOTE: If this is your first time here, please start at the homepage. You can also browse other articles to find more information.

Once just a trickle, Canada's Rx drugs pouring into USA

It began as a novelty: grannies riding buses to Canada in search of cheaper medicines. But today, that search has mushroomed into a cross-border war that pits desperate consumers and defiant state and local governments against the powerful pharmaceutical industry and the Bush administration.

The border war is being driven by a rapid rise in the cost of medications and the frustration of one in four U.S. seniors who have no drug coverage.

It's also fueled by the tepid economy and rising unemployment in the USA, the ease of long-distance commerce over the Internet and increased awareness of significantly lower drug prices in Canada.

Frustrated by Washington's inability to control health costs, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has proposed establishing a drug importation program for state employees and retirees.

Governors in Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota are considering similar moves ? steps that would institutionalize the trade on an unprecedented scale.

By hugging high prices in a death-grip, the drugmakers increase public anger and thereby become the main force for legislative action to simply cut prices.

In political terms, President Bush and the GOP, which have received tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, find themselves heading toward an election year defending drugmakers' pricing practices that charge Americans the highest prices in the world.

Americans 65 and older are the largest consumers of health care. Many take multiple medicines that consume a large share of their fixed incomes.

The bottom line to this whole thing is you have ordinary God-fearing people who live in the U.S. who cannot afford their medicine.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who lack drug insurance are taking advantage of Canada's government-regulated prices without leaving home. They're using the Internet, faxes, phones and mail to fill prescriptions.

The pharmaceutical industry has begun to retaliate, too. U.S. drugmakers have curtailed sales to certain big Canadian sellers and have threatened to limit supplies to others.

They cannot tell you a single case they've discovered of anybody getting ill from Canadian drugs.

The drug industry is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. It employs hundreds of lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress.

The savings available from Canada are so great ? 85% less than U.S. prices on some drugs, such as the breast-cancer treatment Tamoxifen ? that they are impossible to ignore.

An overwhelming 71% of Americans in a recent USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll supported legalizing prescription drug sales from Canada.