N.H. Ahead of Curve on Drug Re-Imports
By Dennis Mayer
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 – With rising health care costs a major issue facing legislators, many members of Congress have considered re-importing low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries as an option to reduce costs.
New Hampshire’s congressmen are no exception.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, sponsored a plan that would legalize re-importing prescription drugs and allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the re-imports.
In a June press release announcing the bill, Gregg stressed its safety aspect.
“We cannot take the fast and furious approach to this issue,” he said of the bill, called the Safe IMPORT Act. “Patients should not be forced to trade safety for affordability.”
Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., who introduced Gregg’s bill in the House, said the focus of his and Gregg’s efforts was to regulate re-importation to make it safer.
“I always have said that I support safe re-importation,” Bradley said in a phone interview last week. “We have to do it in such a way to ensure that what Americans are getting is the real thing, not counterfeit.”
The re-importation of drugs is an ambiguous legal issue. There is no law expressly prohibiting or permitting it.
Gregg’s bill is not the first attempt by a legislator to officially legalize prescription drug re-importation. Similar bills have either been voted down or Congress took no action. One such bill, sponsored by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), has, like Gregg’s bill, been referred to committee.
Bradley said he and others have voted against similar bills because they didn’t give the FDA enough power to regulate the international sales. For instance, previous bills did not provide for ways to regulate Internet pharmacies.
Neither Bradley’s nor Gregg’s bill has been acted on since being referred to committee. With the current backlog of appropriations and security legislation in both chambers, there will be no time for legislators to act on the bills before the end of the 108th Congress this year.
Bradley said, however, that he was looking forward to reintroducing the bill in Congress next session.
Gregg spokeswoman Erin Rath said Gregg, too, would return to the issue next session.
“This is a problem that is not going away and that we must get a handle on, so yes, I expect Sen. Gregg will introduce something next year,” she said. “The issue is very complex, and with everything going on in the wrap-up of this session of Congress, we ran out of time to build consensus on both sides of the Hill.”
Bradley’s opponent in the Nov. 2 general election, Portsmouth lawyer Justin Nadeau, supports prescription drug re-importation. Gregg’s opponent, 95-year-old campaign finance reform activist Doris “Granny D” Haddock, accuses Gregg of supporting the program so that the government won’t have to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, an action she says Gregg wants to avoid.
Both Bradley and Gregg enjoy comfortable leads over their Democratic opponents, according to separate polls conducted by Franklin Pierce College and the University of New Hampshire for WMUR-TV.
Doctors are wary of providing low-priced prescription drugs without first ensuring that the drugs are safe, according to a statement provided by the American Medical Association from former AMA President Dr. Donald J. Palmisano.
“Patient safety must remain the overriding concern in any discussion on drug re-importation,” Palmisano said. “Any new drug re-importation law, regulation or state initiative must assure that these re-imported drugs are approved by the FDA for sale to America’s patients.”
According to Palmisano’s statement, the AMA is studying mechanisms for safe re-importation of prescription drugs. The results of this study are scheduled to be announced in December.
In the meantime, re-imported prescription drugs are a reality in New Hampshire, due in large part to the state’s close proximity to the Canadian border.
The state Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t track state residents who buy prescription drugs from Canada, said Greg Moore, a department spokesman.
But Patti Stolte, director of the Coos County ServiceLink in Berlin, said that buying prescription drugs from Canada was “very prevalent” among the senior citizens she advises, especially since many travel to Canada regularly for other business.
“If they are active and able to travel, a lot of them are getting [prescription drugs] there,” she said.
Gov. Craig Benson on his Website offers links to Canadian Internet pharmacies, along with safety guidelines for using them. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Benson, said that one of the online pharmacies linked to the governor’s Website, CanadaDrugs.com, received 394 new New Hampshire-based patients in the four months after the link went up in April – a 400 percent increase in new patients from the state from the four-month period before that.
Smith said that he didn’t believe the practice was illegal and that constituents have responded positively to Benson’s progressive views on it.
“It’s been an issue that has united people,” he said, adding that polling has suggested that nearly 80 percent of New Hampshire residents support legalized prescription drug re-importation.
###
