Import Drug Bill Clears House

(CBS/AP)  The House approved legislation early Friday allowing Americans to purchase prescription medicine abroad, voting 243-186 after a clash that pitted the hope of lower prices against the fear of counterfeit drugs.

The measure had wide appeal to consumers — thousands of whom have ridden in buses to Canada in recent years to buy lower-cost drugs.

The vote marked a defeat for the pharmaceutical industry, which spends millions lobbying Congress and was repeatedly criticized by lawmakers in both parties for putting profits ahead of patients.

"It's not about safety, it's about money," said conservative Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., practically hissing the word. "There's a woman ... who's dying of breast cancer," he added. "... How do you tell her when she goes to buy tamoxifen that she can't afford it but she could go right across the border to Canada and get it for one sixth or one seventh the cost."

The measure attracted bipartisan support.

"It is time that this Congress stop acting as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the pharmaceutical companies and step up to its responsibility to help the consumers of this nation," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

Foes of the legislation also had adherents on both sides of the aisle.

"The country is going to be flooded with unsafe pharmaceutical counterfeits, over-age pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals that don't preserve and protect the safety of our citizens," countered Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has long worked on drug issues.

Said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., "We can't guarantee that any of those cheap prescription drugs will have any active ingredients in them."

Rep. W.J. Tauzin, R-La., showed the Web site of a Canadian prescription drug house. He said FDA officials had purchased anti-seizure medication from the company, but found it was made in India, not Canada. "It is water inside this package," he said.

The vote sent the bill to the Senate, and House supporters hoped it would be incorporated, as well, in any final compromise on Medicare prescription drug legislation.

But the chances of that appeared to dim even as the debate unfolded on the House floor, when 53 senators announced their opposition to any change in the current law, which allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to decide whether importation would be safe.

Among those signing a letter on the issue were Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Don Nickles, R-Okla., both of whom are part of the group hoping to craft a final Medicare bill this fall.

Congress has approved legislation twice before dealing with the drug importation issue, but both times said the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services would first have to certify that the drugs would be safe. Neither Donna Shalala, who served under former President Clinton, nor Tommy Thompson, who holds office under President Bush, was willing to do so.

This time, the bill backed by Republican Reps. Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri and Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, ordered HHS to set up a system to allow importation of FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved facilities in Canada, the European Union and seven other nations.

The measure also would require imported medicine to be shipped in anti-tampering and anti-counterfeiting packaging.

Even so, the Bush administration issued a statement calling the ill "dangerous legislation."

And FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan said the measure "creates a wide channel for large volumes of unapproved drugs and other products to enter the United States that are potentially injurious to public health and pose a threat to the security of our nation's drug supply."

The vote crossed the customary party and ideological lines in the House. There were 155 Democrats, 87 Republicans and 1 independent in favor, and 45 Democrats and 141 Republicans opposed.

The vote capped an emotional debate, with supporters repeatedly referring to cancer victims who must pay more for medicine at home than they would in Canada or Germany, and opponents warning of drugs that look legitimate, but are worthless, or even hazardous.

Gutknecht held up two packages of the drug tamoxifen, used to combat breast cancer. "Why is it that Americans have to spend $260 for this life-saving drug when Germans can buy it for $60?" he said.
And several lawmakers accused the drug industry of merely trying to protect its own profits. Liberal Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., said it had spread "lies, lies, and lies again" in an effort to kill the bill.

But the drug industry took a different view.

"We do believe there is a safety problem," said Mark Grayson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA. He also said the legislation would import the system of price controls that foreign government impose on drugs.

He said he didn't know how much the group was spending to defeat the bill, adding, "We don't discuss that."

The pharmaceutical industry made more than $20 million in political contributions in the past election, with roughly $8 of every $10 going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

PhRMA itself gave more than $3 million and spent more than $14 million lobbying Congress on various issues last year. In addition, the organization gave millions last year to an organization that aired television commercials on behalf of candidates who backed a GOP-written prescription drug bill.