Drug Importation: A New Beginning?

Drug importation into the U.S. has been declared dead more times than a narcoleptic Jason Voorhees. As a follow-up to Monday's post about parallel trade in the European Union, I regret to inform you that we may be headed for another sequel.

A couple of months ago, I was relieved to note that both Presidential candidates were backing away from drug importation into the U.S. (See Getting a Clue on Importation.)

Unfortunately, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has been nominated by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Health and Human Services, is a big fan of importation.

Check out Senator Daschle’s 2004 Op-Ed Health-care system picks winners and losers, in which he states:

Second, to lower drug costs, we can pass bipartisan legislation supported by Republicans John McCain and Olympia Snowe and Democrats Byron Dorgan and myself that allows for the safe importation of lower-cost drugs from Canada and other countries.

FYI, he is referring to his co-sponsorship of the 2004 Senate importation bill (S.2328), which didn’t get very far. He was no longer in the Senate by the time the 2007 version (S.242 Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2007) came along, so he could not join then-Senator Obama in supporting this bill.

The conventional wisdom suggests that the contaminated heparin incident, among other things, has pushed drug importation off the radar screen. But I’m not so sure given Sen. Daschle’s many, many public pro-importation comments over the years. And some groups, such as wholesalers, will potentially benefit from legalized importation, as I note in Drug Importation and Global Wholesale.

Stay tuned for Part XIII...

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New Drug Channels readers can read a summary of my views in Importation Illusions (published in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing) or in many previous DC posts.