U.S. dollar falling fast to an 11 year low....

[Justme]

"Every company on earth is going to try its best to win back lost revenue."

Companies are in it for the stockholders, and executive management.....

[Ronin]

Of course,
Up her NORTEL fucked everyone over.
They artifically inflated their stocks, then, devalued them till they were penny stocks, but ONLY offered any of them to shareholders , then they announce these huge contracts and there stock is UP again and the shareholders have MORE stocks and just had to pay pennies for them !!!!!

[Freddy]

"What people just do not understand is that when Canada regulates drug prices to keep them low, AMERICANS PAY MORE.

Every company on earth is going to try its best to win back lost revenue."
The Wastrel could you kindly elaborate more on this? I dont know the statistics on this but theres alot of Canadian drug companies that produce drugs for use within Canada (for Canadians) [keeping in mind how drugs are tested and regulated may defer in the U.S.A. than within Canada. It depends on whatever the criteria is]. I wouldnt mind seeing the latest stats. on how much drugs are imported from America to Canada and vis verse. And whether Canadian drug companies export drugs at higher prices (to the U.S.) than they would within Canada. (It also depends on the type of drug. Whether its a unique drug manufactured by one company or not. And where this drug company is located. U.S.A. or Canada?).
Is it lost revenue or is it revenue they wish they had but never got a hold of?

[Jamoke]

Drugs from Canada spark debate, interest across the U.S.
BY MIKE DORNING
Chicago Tribune

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - (KRT) - As the price of prescription drugs stirs complaints from consumers across the country, Springfield, a financially strapped city in western Massachusetts, has dramatically cut its health-care costs with a daring end run around high U.S. prices by arranging for city workers to buy lower-cost Canadian medication.

Growing numbers of Americans have been purchasing drugs from Canadian pharmacies either by crossing the border or by ordering over the Internet. But the mail-order program that Springfield has arranged through its municipal health-insurance plan appears to be the first organized effort to import drugs by a local government, according to city officials and health-policy analysts.

After a little more than three months, the city's experience offers a glimpse of the possibilities ahead for Illinois should Gov. Rod Blagojevich win enactment of a similar Canadian-drug-import plan for state workers. Blagojevich last month announced a feasibility study of such a plan, a move that was quickly followed by the governors of Iowa and Minnesota.

Blagojevich planed to announce on Tuesday a campaign to enlist American consumers in an effort to show the Food and Drug Administration that there is increasing frustration with the high cost of prescription drugs in the United States and the federal government's restrictions on buying cheaper drugs from Canada.

Springfield, Mass., also is emerging as a flashpoint in political struggles over the affordability of prescription drugs purchased in the United States and efforts to force those prices down through competition. The House has passed legislation that would give American consumers broader rights to order medication from Canada, where it is cheaper thanks to price controls, but opposition has stalled the measure in the Senate.

Springfield city workers and their dependents, 20,000 people, are eligible for the drug plan. Though it is just getting started, Springfield officials and leaders of municipal employee unions said the program has proved popular with workers.

One incentive for workers to buy the Canadian drugs is that the city passes along some of the savings by waiving co-pays.

To patients, Springfield's program works much like the mail-order discount pharmaceutical programs that many U.S. companies encourage employees to use.

Workers who regularly use a prescription drug order a three-month supply in advance through the Internet or by mail, and the medication is then delivered to their home. In addition to Canadian mail-order purchases, Springfield workers still have the option of buying from a U.S. mail-order company or from local pharmacies.

Already, Springfield officials said, the program has trimmed $300,000 from the city's drug bills, but that represents a fraction of the projected savings as the number of eligible employees choosing to buy drugs from Canada grows rapidly. Mayor Michael Albano, who uses the plan to purchase insulin for his diabetic son, believes Springfield may be able to chop up to $9 million off the city's annual bill for medication, which last year was $18.5 million.

Still, the program has set this city of 153,000 on a collision course with the FDA, U.S. drugmakers and local pharmacists, all of which vigorously oppose it.

Last month, the FDA sent out a warning letter to CanaRx Services, the company that serves as a broker for city employees' orders to Canadian pharmacies, ordering it to halt processing orders. The agency said the operation violates U.S. laws that allow importation of pharmaceuticals only with FDA approval. In general the agency only gives approval to U.S. drug companies.

But G. Anthony Howard, president and chief executive officer of the Ontario-based company, vowed to continue processing the orders, rejecting the FDA's authority over his company as well as its finding that his business is illegal.

"There's nothing I'm doing that's illegal," Howard said. "My company is Canadian, and I'm Canadian. I have lawyers in Washington, and we'll fight this."

If CanaRx does not cease processing orders, an FDA official said, the agency may request that Canadian regulators take action against CanaRx or order the U.S. Customs Service to seize shipments at the border.

In most cases the drugs sold by CanaRx are actually made in the United States, then exported to Canada, Howard said.

The FDA and advocates for the U.S. drug industry argued that re-importing drugs back into this country poses a safety risk, since they are outside the FDA's regulatory supervision while north of the border. Consequently, they contended, the FDA cannot ensure against poor handling or the possibility that a Canadian supplier might substitute foreign-made counterfeit drugs.

"In this type of situation, the state board of pharmacy and the FDA don't have any jurisdiction outside the United States, and consumers don't have any recourse if something happens," said Tom McGinnis, director of pharmacy affairs for the FDA.

In its warning letter to CanaRx, the FDA alleged that insulin purchased undercover from one of the company's Internet sites arrived warm, which would degrade the medication because it requires refrigeration. Howard denied the charge, saying that CanaRx had contacted every customer who ordered insulin and all reported that their medication arrived in satisfactory condition.

Springfield city officials and union leaders said they had received no reports of ill effects from imported drugs.

Albano said he had already received two shipments of insulin for his 13-year-old son. Both arrived cold and in good condition, he said.

"My son has to inject insulin four times a day," he said. "I certainly would not let my son inject himself with insulin I thought was counterfeit or had anything wrong with it.

"This is Canada we're talking about. We're not talking about Iraq or Iran."

An FDA official said the agency is performing a study to test differences in the proportion of counterfeit medication that is purchased in the United States compared with mail-order purchases from Canada. But in testimony to Congress in April, William Hubbard, an associate FDA commissioner, said the agency had not received any reports of patients harmed through medication purchased from Canada.

On average, prescriptions cost 40 percent less to fill in Canada, according to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, a Canadian health agency.

With the number of American consumers trying to buy Canadian drugs rapidly increasing, at least four major U.S. drug manufacturers have retaliated by either taking steps to restrict supply to Canadian pharmacies or threatening to do so.

American drugmakers argued that flooding the U.S. market with cheaper drugs is not just unsafe, but also reduces the incentive to spend heavily on developing new medications.

"The U.S. industry does not want somebody else's government-mandated price-fixing scheme and artificially low prices imported into this country to stifle innovation in the most innovative pharmaceutical industry in the world," said Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the industry's trade association.

Angered by the opposition of drugmakers, Albano has asked the city's retirement board to divest itself of $6.2 million in pharmaceutical stocks as a protest.

"We're serious about fair pricing," Albano said. "I'm not going to be a hypocrite and make claims that the pharmaceutical industry is gouging the American consumer on the one hand and on the other hand use the profits for my retirement plan."

[Ronin]

It takes LONGER for a drug to be available here in Canada, then it does in the US.
Health Canada is more stringent in their approvals.

[The Wastrel]

I wouldnt mind seeing the latest stats. on how much drugs are imported from America to Canada and vis verse. And whether Canadian drug companies export drugs at higher prices (to the U.S.) than they would within Canada.

Dude, you don't get it. This is a huge issue in the U.S. right now.

[Freddy]

I understand The Wastrel thats there a huge debate in the U.S. about it. Its hard to keep up on it. The coverage here isnt too good.
Thanks dude.