OpinionJuly 21, 2000

Now that Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage has joined Washington Sen. Slade Gorton's call for legislation forbidding American drug companies to sell prescription medications for lower costs in other countries than at home, here's a question for both:

Why go after the difference in prices itself instead of the reason for it?

Drug companies in this country do not sell their products to Canadians and residents of other countries for less because the companies have a grudge against people in the United States. They do it because Canada and other industrialized countries have national health plans that bring a lot of clout to the table when they negotiate with drug providers over cost. And the companies, faced with the choice of selling for less or losing an entire nation's business, sell for less.

They then recoup for lower costs elsewhere by charging higher prices in the United States, where most health care consumers are not represented by powerful buyers. Thanks to a government that leaves the health care delivery system fragmented and chaotic, in the United States it's the consumer who must choose to pay up or do without.

Sure, private insurance companies try to hold down prices by bargaining with health care providers, but they lack the power of a central government. And when it comes to prescription drugs, the best they can usually do is steer the consumer to lower-cost mail-order pharmacies. The drug companies themselves remain unscathed.

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And to see that they do, they lobby members of Congress and other government officials to leave them free to set whatever prices they choose.

They also lobby the American people directly, but not honestly. Because they know consumers would hardly defend them under their own names, they hide behind names of groups like Citizens for Better Medicare. That's the outfit that advertises to keep the government from bringing its clout to the table to negotiate drug prices for older Americans covered by the Medicare program.

And Chenoweth-Hage and Gorton's party is helping them do it. Republicans are resisting President Clinton's call to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. They say they prefer subsidizing part of the cost -- the high cost -- of those drugs only.

In other words, they want to treat the symptom, not the disease, which is just what Chenoweth-Hage and Gorton propose with legislation requiring the pharmaceutical industry to charge no more for drugs at home than abroad. And as long as they do, they are advocates of the problem, not of the solution. -- J.F.

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