Senate moves provision allowing Canadian prescription drugs to goal line

July 10, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson today pressed Senate leaders to preserve a just-passed measure that gives seniors easier access via the Internet to lower-cost Canadian prescription drugs.

The measure, offered by Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, passed the Senate late Thursday night as part of a broader homeland security bill.  Yet an identical measure, by Vitter and Nelson, also passed the Senate a few years ago - only to be gutted later at the lobbying of big drug makers.

It's still unclear if the measure will pass the big hurdle this year when House-Senate negotiators meet to reconcile their homeland security bills.  So Nelson wrote a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the lead conferees [ text, below ] as a reminder that even though the Canadian drug provision passed the Senate last night, the fight’s not over. 

“We got this same thing passed before, only to see the lobbyists kill it in conference,” Nelson said today.  “Hopefully this time we’ll be able to get it across the goal line.”

Seniors long have ordered lower-cost medications from Canadian pharmacies.  A few years ago they suddenly found their medicines being seized by the U.S. government.  In 2006 Nelson was able to get customs officials to stop the seizures.

That same year he and Vitter won full Senate passage of the measure to prevent the government from seizing any more medicines from Canada, meaning people could buy them via the Internet.  But it still needed approval by House-Senate negotiators.  In the face of pressure from the drug industry trying to scrap it, the measure was watered down to allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada not on the Internet but only if they could personally carry them across the board. 

If the broader provision remains in the final legislative product this time, Nelson said, it still would only be part of the solution to lowering prescription drug costs for seniors.

Many seniors who have enrolled in the Medicare prescription plan are falling into the program’s big gap in coverage, called the “doughnut hole.”

If the bulk-purchasing restrictions were removed from Medicare and it was allowed to negotiate discounts like the Veterans Administration, Medicare could save billions of dollars annually - enough to significantly reduce or even possibly eliminate the coverage gap, or so-called doughnut hole, Nelson said.

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