Canada mulls ban on patented drug exports

The Canadian government is considering a total ban on exports of price-controlled patented drugs as a way of preserving the country’s lower prices for medicine, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Friday.

It is the newest of several options that the government is mulling which could severely crimp Canada’s billion-dollar mail-order pharmacy market in the United States.

Technically the mechanism would stipulate that whenever government authorities that regulate the prices of patented medicine approves a drug, it would add the requirement that the sales of the drug at the approved price be for use in Canada.

“We’re just beginning to look at it,” Dosanjh told reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons.

Generic drugs exempt
Generic drugs would be exempt. This would leave a little room for Internet pharmacies to continue to do business.

But 80 percent of the volume of their sales — and 88 percent of the value of their sales — so far has been in patented drugs, where they can exploit the difference between the controlled Canadian prices and the higher U.S. prices.

“You have to understand that we have a national pricing regime that is in the national interest. It saves Canadians billions of dollars individually and through the public treasuries in terms of the pharmacare plans,” Dosanjh said.

Each patented drug must currently go through the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.

“The suggestion is that. ... there be an additional requirement that those drugs that are approved by PMPRB for sale within a certain price range be absolutely and just for domestic consumption in Canada,” he said.

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“It simply means that you would be then prohibited from doing cross-border sales with respect to those drugs that are approved by PMPRB for domestic consumption.”

Booming cross-border business
The cross-border business, which directly employs 4,000 Canadians, has attracted the interest of U.S. governors, mayors and senators as a way of cutting burgeoning medical costs south of the border.

But it has angered brand-name pharmaceutical companies, some of whom have refused to supply Canadian mail-order pharmacies anymore since they are undercutting U.S. prices.

Dosanjh is worried about the whole Canadian system collapsing but the Internet pharmacists say there is little to worry about.

Other options he is mulling include:

• Banning sales to people who are not resident or present in Canada
• Making it illegal for Canadian doctors to countersign prescriptions from American doctors
• Banning bulk exports of drugs
• Creating a list of certain drugs whose export would be banned if shortages or potential shortages developed.

Dosanjh said he could not say when he would make a decision.