Medicare Bill Seen by Some as Win for Drug Lobby NEW YORK (Reuters) - The $400 billion Medicare reform bill, hailed by legislators on Tuesday as a great victory for low-income seniors, could be viewed instead as a sweeping success for drug company lobbyists. Two major issues near and dear to the pocketbooks of drug makers appear to have been resolved in their favor. The law does not allow the government to impose price controls on prescription drugs and keeps illegal the importation of cheaper medicines from other countries. ``This is a special interest bill. Drug companies will laugh all the way to the bank,'' Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis for Consumers Union, told Reuters. ``It appears to be a big windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance industry,'' agreed consumer advocate Larry Sasich of Public Citizen. Each year drug companies spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying. In the first six months of this year, for example, Pfizer Inc. , the world's largest drug maker, spent $1.8 million on lobbying, Eli Lilly and Co. spent $2.9 million, and Merck & Co. spent $4.4 million, according to filings with the Senate Office of Public Records. Industry trade group PhRMA also has its own lobbying budget. Those efforts look to have paid off, protecting profit margins from the kind of price controls common in the rest of the industrialized world and from the access by Americans to those cheaper, importer drugs. ``I personally worked very hard in this area as the chairman of the trade association PhRMA,'' Schering-Plough Chief Executive Fred Hassan told Reuters last week. ``The industry is against any organized mass buying out of any country,'' such as calls by various states to legalize importation of drugs from Canada.  CANADA STILL IN PLAY The prescription drug benefit at the center of the Medicare reform does not take full effect until 2006, and users may still have to pay out thousands of dollars each year for drugs. In the interim, some 40 million Medicare recipients may purchase a discount card that lawmakers say would reduce drug costs by about 15 percent. That is still some 35 percent shy of the savings from getting medicine from Canada. ``There will be a continued push for reimportation because the drugs in Canada will still be cheaper. In fact the push will intensify,'' predicted Diane Duston, a Washington-based analyst for Prudential Equity Group. In an effort to stem the flow of drugs via Internet and mail order, several major drug companies have threatened to cut supplies to Canada to levels that will not accommodate U.S. demand, becoming a virtual border patrol. ``We have to intervene,'' said Peter Corr, Pfizer's head of science and technology. ``We own the drugs and we have a right under our patent system in the world to sell that drug.'' Drug companies and U.S. drug regulators argue the issue is not protecting profits but the safety of consumers. They claim unregulated drugs shipped via third party Web sites could be from anywhere with no way to ensure they are not contaminated or counterfeit. Ottawa last week rebuffed U.S. officials calling for a crackdown of cross-border prescription drug trade. ``To date we have no evidence of Internet pharmacies posing an unacceptable health risk to consumers or of a shortage (of drugs) in Canada because of this practice.'' Krista Apse, a spokeswoman for Health Canada, told Reuters. Consumers Union's Shearer believes once seniors realize what the new Medicare will actually cost them, they will be sorely disappointed. The price differences have drawn cities such as Springfield, Mass., and Burlington, Vt., to set up programs to buy drugs from Canada for municipal workers. The cities are flouting U.S. laws that make it illegal to import medications.  This story originally came Associated Press... Return to the Media Section

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