Doyle reaffirms Canadian drug idea
 

4/15/2004  The Journal Times / Racine, Wisconsin

Governor Jim Doyle told a federal task force on Wednesday that the federal government should allow citizens to import prescription drugs from Canada, and that it should allow states to do so, too. "I told them about the success of the (state's) Web site, the over 70,000 hits that we've had on it, which just demonstrates the enormous interest out there in lower prescription drugs, and how important it is that we do something to put some real competition into the marketplace here so that the drug companies cannot continue to just impose skyrocketing costs on citizens of Wisconsin and the United States," Doyle said. He spoke in a teleconference with reporters shortly after delivering his testimony.

The lower costs of imported Canadian drugs helps citizens and would help the state if that were allowed, he said. "We spend about $700 million as a state on prescription drugs in our Medicaid program and our institutional purchases and others." Buying 100 doses of Celebrex, used to relieve the pain and inflammation of arthritis, costs $171 now at the already discounted state purchase rate, Doyle said, but that same quantity would cost only $72 if purchased through a Canadian company. Such costs point to a potential saving for the state of between $70 million and $140 million with Canadian purchasing, he said."We have found - and there have been a number of media reports - that pretty dramatically show that just going from one pharmacy to another in the same community you can save 10, 20, 30 percent."

Doyle said the state won't start purchasing Canadian drugs. The law is clear on that, he said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said reimportation of drugs is illegal, but Doyle said that's questionable for individuals. Individual Internet purchases are no different, Doyle said, from what people did previously. Click Here to read the entire article.

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