John Whitehead's Commentary

"Drug manufacturers raised prescription medicine prices as much as 10% just before Medicare began its pharmacy discount card program, the AARP said. Its survey for the first three months of the year showed that drug price increases were nearly triple the rate of inflation and negated much of the savings the government promised." --USA Today (July 1, 2004)

Tragic is not a strong enough word to describe the cost of prescription drugs in the United States. It's a horrible scandal. And to add insult to injury, recent reports indicate that federal agents have been harassing senior citizens who travel to Canada to get cheaper prescription drugs.

As Congress debates whether to allow foreign pharmacies to fill prescriptions, studies point out that the prices for ten popular drugs were 33 to 80 percent less in Canada than in the U.S. For example, as Associated Press writer Mark Sherman found, "a three-month supply of cholesterol-controlling Lipitor, the world's best-selling prescription drug, was 37 percent cheaper in Canada." The biggest price difference is the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, which is 80 percent cheaper in Canada. Take a look at just a few examples of the differences in price for the very same prescription drug in the U.S.:

•Mirapex, for Parkinson's disease: $157 in Canada vs. $263 in the U.S.
•Diovan, for high blood pressure: $149 in Canada vs. $253 in the U.S.
•Celexa, for depression: $149 in Canada vs. $253 in the U.S.
•Campath, a new cancer drug: $1,660 in Canada vs. $2,400 in the U.S.

Why Canadians are spared higher drug prices is due, in large part, to price controls. The Canadian government has wisely established a review board to ensure that drug prices are not so expensive that people cannot have access to them.

As might be expected, it is the sick and especially the elderly who are in need of affordable medicine. In fact, according to the American Association of Retired Persons, older Americans spend almost three times as much of their income (21%) on health care as those under the age of 65 (8%), and more than three-quarters of Americans aged 65 and over are taking prescription drugs. And it is estimated that the elderly in the U.S., who make up 12% of the population, use one-third of all prescription drugs.

Unfortunately, approximately 40 percent of older Americans do not have insurance coverage for prescription drugs. Moreover, one study indicates that more than one in eight older Americans has been forced to choose between buying food and buying medicine.

The inability to afford lifesaving drugs in the U.S. has forced many elderly American citizens to travel to Canada--some in busloads. And although bringing prescription drugs into the U.S. from Canada is now illegal, the federal government has not tried to block individuals from traveling to Canada to get much-needed prescription drugs--that is, until recently.

Consider what happened to 68-year-old Dick and Vada Johnson of Minnesota. Although they don't like the long bus rides, they see their two-day trips to Canada as a necessity. And things seemed to be going smoothly until last October. As Dick Johnson tells the story in the AARP Bulletin (June 2004), "We started that day, Oct. 21, at 7:30 in the morning, and I think it was about 3:30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon when we actually got to our destination in Canada. When we crossed the border, our group leader went into customs and declared that we were going across to buy prescription drugs. When we arrived in Winnipeg, we actually went to see a doctor, and he wrote the prescriptions. The next day we went to a pharmacy and picked them up. That same day, when we came back across the border to Pembina, N.D., our group leader went back into customs. Then she came back and said, 'The FDA is going to board the bus.'"

Of course, this made those on the bus a bit nervous. But what followed was unexpected. "The FDA agents came on the bus like Gestapo agents," Johnson said. "They were in black uniforms, similar to police uniforms, that said 'FDA' on them."

Actually, the actions of the FDA agents amounted to an illegal search of American citizens. "They started at the back of the bus and looked at everybody's purchases. They actually went into our bags, physically looked at the bottles, looked at you, and then moved on to the next person, working their way up to the front."

This process took about 30 minutes. And as Johnson noted, "I could see that some of the people on the bus were very apprehensive, obviously a little shook up with what was going on." Thinking that their newly-purchased prescription drugs might be confiscated, Johnson and the others became worried.

Although the passengers' fears were not realized, the actions of the agents constituted harassment. "I don't think it was an accident that the FDA came on the bus, because they knew exactly what we were doing, they knew our intent," Johnson said. "To me, it was orchestrated to scare a bunch of seniors."

This incident wasn't made public until several months ago when Sen. Mark Dayton (D.-Minn.) wrote to the FDA to complain about it. And although an FDA official said this was "an unusual event," you can bet this wasn't the only so-called unusual event.

Despite the growing popular support for allowing drug imports, such efforts are being resisted by powerful drug companies greedily scarfing up profits from the sick, poor and elderly. Indeed, a recent study found disturbing evidence that older Americans and others who pay for their own prescription drugs are charged far more than the drug companies' most-favored customers--such as large insurance companies and health maintenance organizations.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration and other politicians are opposing drug imports, mainly citing safety reasons. However, this is something that could easily be taken care of through the passage of prudent legislation.

It's time to fight back. People like Dick and Vada Johnson are refusing to be intimidated and say they plan on making regular trips to Canada to purchase affordable prescription drugs. We all should be writing, e-mailing and calling the president and our representatives in Congress to urge them to act. Otherwise, we will continue to find ourselves under the stranglehold of greedy drug companies.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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