On the Horizon
Eerie Contrasts as Drug Industry Tries to Stop Older and Disabled Americans from Getting Medications from Canada
By Robert Hayes, MRC News, Spring 2003
These are days of eerie contrast.
We just spent a warm, spring day in Washington, D.C., a day when war was still waging in Iraqi cities, and casualties were mounting on all sides.
Look one way and you see the cherry trees in full bloom around the Tidal Basin. Look the other way and you see barricades and soldiers surrounding the Capitol.
Almost unnoticed on that spring day was a Congressional hearing on efforts by the Bush Administration and the pharmaceutical industry to stop American citizens from purchasing prescription drugs from Canada.
GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world's largest drug-makers, had just threatened to cut off supplies to any Canadian pharmacy that supplied U.S. citizens with prescription drugs at Canadian prices-usually about half of U.S. prices. Almost simultaneously, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new policy threatening civil and criminal penalties to those who assist in the importation of prescription drugs for use by Americans.
At MRC we serve as reporters in the trenches of the real America, so we regularly troop down to the District of Columbia to share the stories we hear, day after day, on our consumer helplines.
More and more older Americans cannot afford the medicines their doctors prescribe. As a result, they suffer needlessly and die prematurely. And for hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, Canadian druggists-contacted by mail order, internet site or bus trip-provide a life-line to affordable prescription medicine.
Smaller profits for multi-national drug companies do not worry us (particularly since the pharmaceutical industry is among the most profitable in the Fortune 500). But at last count there were over 600 congressional lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry whose job is to worry about that.
On this spring day, I was heartened to see no partisanship as the men and women of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness voiced strong support for human needs, and little interest in pharmaceutical profiteering.
To a member-conservatives, liberals, and centrists alike-they were enraged at the Bush Administration and the pharmaceutical industry for what they saw happening: a conspiracy to maintain unconscionable drug prices at the expense of the American people.
Three committee members, Republicans Dan Burton of Indiana and Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, led the other committee members in berating both the Bush Administration's witnesses and the empty chair reserved for GlaxoSmithKline CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier, who simply refused to appear at the hearing.
William Hubbard, an associate FDA commissioner, had the bad luck to represent the Bush Administration. When Mr. Hubbard told the committee that the FDA's crack-down on medicine from Canada was intended to protect the safety of the American people,, members of the committee snickered.
Congressman Gutknecht, the Minnesota Republican, asked Commissioner Hubbard if he could name a single American who had fallen ill because of a prescription drug imported from Canada. As the witness cringed and sat mute, Mr. Gutknecht drove his point home, "Commissioner, a drug is neither safe nor effective if a patient cannot afford it."
Congressman Burton, a conservative Republican, called the FDA a disgrace for scaring older Americans and explicitly linked the FDA's policies to large political donations made to the Congress and to the White House by the pharmaceutical industry.
Congressman Sanders, the former democratic socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, said he will ask the General Accounting Office to study how many Americans die each year because they cannot afford prescription drugs. Mr. Burton said he would join in the request.
Efforts to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare have crumbled-time and time again-under the weight of partisan politics. For once, a tri-partisan group on Capitol Hill was standing in unison for the health needs of the American people.
On a day of eerie contrasts it seemed, perhaps, that the wind was shifting.