For a Utahn with severe allergic reactions, an EpiPen can be the difference between life and death.
The same is true for a Canadian, but the big difference is the cost. Whereas a Utah resident could pay $600 for a two-pack, in Canada the same pens sell for about a third of the cost.
It’s just one example of dozens like it where out-of-control drug prices are literally bankrupting Americans, driving health care costs higher while the pharmaceutical companies are raking in profits.
Ideally, Congress would address the problem. But if you saw the news recently where a train carrying members of Congress hit a garbage truck, you saw a metaphor for national lawmaking these days — a train wreck and a trash fire.
President Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address, said reducing drug prices is one of his top priorities, but forgive me for being skeptical when the man whom he put in charge of the U.S. health care system, Alex Azar, is a former drug company executive.
Drugmakers have spent millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts and essentially have a stranglehold on both parties. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, alone, has received nearly $600,000 from pharmaceutical interests since 2011, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
So state Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Orem, is proposing HB163, which could at least be a partial solution. Thurston wants the Utah Department of Health to import drugs that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The program would have to be reviewed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and, if it assures safeguards are in place and the program can save money, drugs may soon be shipped here from Canada.
Thurston — who in his day job is the director of the Office of Health Care Statistics at the Utah Department of Health — points to the example of Humalog, a diabetes medication that sells in the United States for $329 but in Canada for just $23 a dose.
Humalog is manufactured in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. And those EpiPens? They come from St. Louis. We are talking about buying U.S.-made products from another country because, defying all logic, that actually would save us money.
Implemented on a large scale, it could save Utahns millions of dollars each year.
State Rep. Ed Redd, who is a physician, said he has seen numerous patients who can’t afford needed drugs; he could rattle off a bunch of medications that, if people had to pay for them out of pocket, they’d go bankrupt, “end of story.”
Drug costs are the fastest-growing portion of health care costs and the fastest-growing portion of the state’s Medicaid budget.
Intermountain Healthcare gets it: You can’t control costs without addressing drug prices. So the hospital chain announced last month that it started its own nonprofit generic drug company in an attempt to keep the costs of prescriptions in check.
IHC, Utah Hospital Association, SelectHealth and Regence BlueCross BlueShield have all endorsed Thurston’s legislation.
The main argument against reimportation is patients could end up with unsafe, counterfeit drugs, even though the bill would allow only FDA-approved prescriptions from FDA-approved facilities to be imported and researchers have said Canadian drugs are no less safe than those currently on the market.
Cutting costs could also diminish the amount of money drug companies have to spend on researching new life-saving medications, opponents say, and that gives them heartburn — the kind of heartburn that can’t be treated with a $300 pill.
But don’t shed too many tears for the big pharmaceutical makers. The Government Accountability Office reported recently that drug costs have doubled since the 1990s, that sales have climbed to $775 billion a year, and that profit margins for the drug makers is up to 20 percent. In short: These companies are making enormous profits at the expense of people whose lives are in some cases literally dependent on their product.
A House committee approved Thurston’s bill last week, but that doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing. Pharmaceutical companies have lined up more than a dozen lobbyists who are working against it.
The drug importation idea is model legislation proposed by the National Academy of State Health Policy and is being pushed in other states, as well. If enough get on board and the program works in controlling costs and providing safe medications, we could finally see some incentive for Congress to act.
The Utah Legislature has never been shy about poking at the federal government on trivial matters. This one is no trivial matter. It would be beneficial for thousands of Utahns with serious medical problems and all Utahns who are seeing their insurance rates driven higher and higher by obscene drug prices.
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