News Article

Senate Votes to Lift Ban on Imported Prescription Drugs
Washington (CNN) 

With the rising cost of medicine emerging as a political issue on the campaign trail, the Senate Wednesday voted 74-21 to allow the importation and sale of prescription drugs from other countries.

The measure, attached to the annual spending bill for the Agriculture Department, faced stiff opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which raised safety concerns about imported prescriptions drugs.

The House of Representatives has already approved a similar measure, and a compromise bill will have to be crafted before the legislation reaches the White House for consideration.

Prodded by senior citizens frustrated by the cost of rising medicine, lawmakers have been wrestling with this issue for months. Senior citizens have banded together in caravans to travel to Canada and Mexico to buy their prescription drugs, where they are much cheaper.

If you will be footing the bill yourself for an expensive prescription drug, ask your doctor whether a generic or an older brand-name medication would be an effective substitute. Don't expect the doctor to have factored in price already. In a recent survey of 134 physicians published in Archives of Internal Medicine, 80 percent said they were unaware of the actual costs of the medications they prescribe. And nearly one third of doctors did not realize that their elderly patients generally have to pay for drugs out of pocket.

The U.S.A. is the most expensive pharmaceutical market in the world however there are 70 million of its citizens with little or no prescription drug coverage (including 34% of its more vulnerable seniors). Patient Assistance Services estimate there are fully 42 million Americans with absolutely no drug coverage. Yet perversely, because of the health delivery system in the U.S., the price that uninsured individuals or families have to pay for prescriptions is sometimes two and three times more than their insured neighbours?