DAN RATHER: On Capitol Hill, lobbyists for big American pharmaceutical companies lost a big one, at least for now. CBS's Joie Chen reports the House voted to give Americans access to lower-cost foreign drugs.
JOIE CHEN: It's scenes like these that pushed lawmakers to act: seniors crossing the borders into Canada and Mexico in search of cheaper drugs.
VIOLA QUIRION (Maine Senior Citizen): We go to Canada to get our drugs because it's a big, big, big saving. I save at l--every time I go, I save over $1,000.
CHEN: The savings can be significant. For example, tamoxifen, used by breast cancer patients: 30 tablets at a US drugstore, $180; the same amount overseas, just $30. The cholesterol drug Lipitor: $108; about $60 from one Canadian supplier. Although individuals have been able to buy small amounts of drugs outside the country for personal use, drugstores and online drug sellers are banned from buying cheap medicine outside the US for resale here. The bill would allow them to do so. The raucous debate over making reimportation legal kept lawmakers at work until almost 3 AM, opponents arguing it would expose Americans to diluted, tainted, even phony medicine.
Rep. BILLY TAUZIN (R-La.): This is the authentic one, this is the fake one. The fake one contains nothing but pond water.
CHEN: But supporters say there's evidence to the contrary.
Rep. BERNARD SANDERS (I-Vt.): --that one million Americans have gone to Canada to buy their medicine without one death, without one problem.
CHEN: Lawmakers were blunt about the influence drug companies have on the debate.
Rep. RAHM EMANUEL (D-Ill.): There's a pharmaceutical lobbyist and a half for every member of Congress. They have spent over $100 million in contributions, entertainment and lobbying expec--expenses all focused on us.
CHEN: And expect that influence to increase this fall as the House and Senate try to work out their differences over how to fix Medicare and make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. Dan.
RATHER: Reporting live from the Capitol, Joie Chen.
--Dan Rather and Joie Chen on the CBS Evening News, July 25, 2003.
DAN RATHER: Millions of Americans squeezed by the soaring costs of prescription drugs could be in for some relief. Ruling 6-to-3, the US Supreme Court today gave the state of Maine an opportunity to at least try out a first-of-a-kind plan, a plan to force major drug companies to reduce prices for the poor and the uninsured. Many other states want to impose similar plans. CBS's Cynthia Bowers has the important ruling, and its potential impact on what you pay for prescription drugs.
CYNTHIA BOWERS: Today's Supreme Court decision could be a huge financial relief to Viola Quirion and others like her who have no prescription drug coverage; more than 300,000 in Maine alone.
VIOLA QUIRION (Maine Resident): It was bad for us. Today is a great, great day. I haven't felt good like that in four years.
BOWERS: Not since Maine passed a law designed to cut prescription drug costs by 25 percent. Until today, that plan was stalled by court challenges. Maine Rx calls on drugmakers to reduce prices for all of that state's 1.3 million residents. Companies that don't comply could find themselves locked out of the lucrative business of selling to Medicaid patients.
CHELLIE PINGREE (Frmr. Maine Senate Majority Leader): I think it sends a huge signal to these big pharmaceutical manufacturers, 'Look, you've got to look at your prices and you've got to look at making sure that this is fair to all American citizens.'
BOWERS: The drug industry points out this ruling is by no means the final word, and key factual issues surrounding the case have yet to be decided. But for now this decision comes as a victory for uninsured Americans who have been forced to make tough choices as the cost of prescription drugs have shot up an average of 15 percent a year; an increase driven by popular drugs like Prilosec. The cost of the acid reflux medication has jumped 27 percent over the last five years to an average of $1,600 annually. Cholesterol-lowering Pravachol has gone up 41 percent to more than $1,000.
(Graphic on screen)
Prescription Drug Prices
Prilosec Pravachol
up 27% up 41% $1,684/YR. $1,015/YR.
BOWERS: In all, 29 states and Puerto Rico expressed support for the Maine initiative, which is a clear indication of the impatience being felt in statehouses over the lack of prescription drug reform at the federal level.
Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH (D-Ill.): If we wait for Washington to act, s--s--some things never get done. So we're going to seize the opportunity that we have here. I think that the genie is out of out of the bottle.
BOWERS: But if it's to stay out of the bottle, it will have to pass more court tests. The only guarantee at this point is that as America gets older and more employers cut back on benefits, the pressure to do more to make drugs cost less will only increase. Cynthia Bowers, CBS News, Chicago.
--Dan Rather and Cynthia Bowers on the CBS Evening News, May 19, 2003.
DAN RATHER: President Bush today outlined his new prescription drug plan for seniors. He hoped it would be better received than his last one, which offered drug benefits to those who would switch from Medicare to HMOs. As CBS's Joie Chen reports, it's the start of another high-stakes debate while seniors keep paying the price.
JOIE CHEN: Like many older Americans, Viola Quirion faces tough choices over what she needs to survive.
VIOLA QUIRION (Medicare Recipient): First, I buy my prescriptions to make sure I have enough money for that. Then if I have any left, that's what I have to do with the food.
CHEN: The price of her prescriptions for ovarian cancer and a variety of other ills keeps going up. She says she and other Medicare recipients are in desperate need of prescription drug coverage. Adding drug coverage to Medicare is at the heart of the president's domestic agenda.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: We can and we must improve Medicare and protect our seniors from runaway health-care costs.
CHEN: He outlined his plan to fix Medicare today and offers three options: traditional Medicare, with a drug discount card and a $600 drug subsidy for low-income seniors; a choice of subsidized private-sector plans with drug coverage and participants paying some of the cost, or an HMO-style program that would provide full drug benefits.
But the president's plan is already in trouble. Democrats complain it will be too costly and will force seniors into managed care just to get the drug benefit. And even moderate Republicans warn it's not comprehensive enough. They say it's just a first step.
Sen. OLYMPIA SNOWE (R-Maine): I applaud the president for moving that direction, understanding that this is a major down payment. Obviously, it will require more into the future.
CHEN: Lawmakers have wrangled over Medicare for more than five years, but with a new proposal now on the table, they'll have a tough time meeting the deadline Mr. Bush set today, putting a fix in place by this summer. Joie Chen, CBS News, Capitol Hill.
--Dan Rather and Joie Chen on the CBS Evening News, March 4, 2003. (Repeated on CBS Morning News, March 5, 2003)
MIKE WALLACE: Fully 15 million of America's senior citizens--15 million of them, one out of three--have no health insurance coverage to help them pay for their prescription drugs. As a result, many of them simply cannot afford the drugs they need to keep them alive or to make their lives livable. The average annual income of America's seniors is $ 16,000, and they get that amount from Social Security payments and pensions. And a substantial number of seniors have to pay as much as a third of their income just for their prescription drugs.
VIOLA QUIRION: By the time I pay my rent and I pay my supplement insurance, which don't cover prescriptions, I don't have much left over.
(Footage of Viola Quirion at medicine cabinet; Quirion in living room; Quirion in kitchen)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Viola Quirion is a 73-year-old retiree from Waterville, Maine. She spends nearly a quarter of her $ 900 monthly income on the drugs her doctor has prescribed: Relafen for severe arthritis in her knees and back, and Prilosec for a stomach disorder. Never married, she worked for four decades in the local Hathaway shirt factory for a salary just above minimum wage.
So you have just your Social Security--
QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: --and your pension.
QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: And it's not enough.
QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: It would be enough without the drugs. Without the--
QUIRION: Well, without the drug--if the drugs weren't so expensive, it would m--be much better. I could live much better. I'd have a little--probably a little change at the end of the month. I wouldn't have to worry about how to get a--bread or a quart of milk or--
WALLACE: Is it that bad, really?
QUIRION: Oh, yes, it is that bad. It is that bad.
GEORGE KOURPIAS: We have thousands upon thousands of seniors that can't afford the medicine that's prescribed for them. We have them cutting pills in half.
(Footage of George Kourpias and Wallace)
WALLACE: George Kourpias is president of the National Council of Senior Citizens.
KOURPIAS: The average income of a senior in America is $ 16,000 a year. Fifteen million of them are not covered at all, have no prescription drug coverage.
WALLACE: Why aren't old folks protected by Medicare, as far as drug costs are concerned?
KOURPIAS: It's not part of the law. This is what we're trying to get done now. What we need to do is enact a universal, comprehensive prescription drug program under Medicare so everybody is covered.
(Footage of National Council of Senior Citizens protest)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Many seniors who did have some drug coverage through private insurance plans have now lost it, for in just the past 18 months, nearly a million American seniors were told by their HMOs or their health plans that their drugs will no longer be covered. But now many seniors have discovered there are places they can get their drugs cheaper: Mexico and Canada.
KOURPIAS: Well, what's happening is that seniors in America have to pay two or three times the price for a drug that is sold in either Mexico or Canada.
(Footage of bus; seniors; seniors on bus; roadside as seen from bus; Carolyn Swift with Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And so the seniors' council has organized and helped pay for several bus trips for seniors to go to Canada to buy their drugs, and we went along on one of those trips. The bus started in Portland, Maine, drove across New Hampshire, then up through Vermont, picking up about 40 seniors along the way. One of the seniors we met, Carolyn Swift, a retired English professor.
CAROLYN SWIFT: I feel that we are all--on this bus, we are refugees from the American health care system.
WALLACE: What do you mean?
SWIFT: We are, all of us, inadequately insured, struggling to take our medications, without which we will die. And thank goodness Canada's here.
(Footage of Lena Sanford)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Lena Sanford is a 73-year-old retiree from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And like most seniors who are having health difficulties, she has to take more drugs than the average American.
You take how many drugs every day?
LENA SANFORD: I take about 16.
WALLACE: Sixteen?
SANFORD: Yeah.
WALLACE: What do you take?
SANFORD: I take six alone for my lung disease. I take pills for high blood pressure, anxiety, for arthritis. I got a whole list of things here.
WALLACE: How much every month for drugs?
SANFORD: My drugs comes to 13--
WALLACE: $ 1,365?
SANFORD: For what I'm paying here in the United States, it'd be one-third over in Canada.
(Footage of Sanford)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Lena's insurance used to cover that $ 1,365, but as we said, like millions of other seniors across the country, her insurance plan recently stopped paying for her drugs. So she went to Canada, because it turns out the drugs she needs cost more than her total monthly income of $ 1,200.
SANFORD: You know what I feel like, Mike?
WALLACE: Hmm?
SANFORD: A convict.
WALLACE: A convict?
SANFORD: I'm g--I'm leaving this country to go to another country, going over the border to get my medication so that I can live. I think it's a disgrace.
(Footage of bus; seniors and Wallace in drugstore)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) The bus crossed over to Canada from Vermont, and once there, we followed the seniors to a Montreal drugstore where many of them had their prescriptions filled for about half the price they paid in the US. Lena Sanford said that she saved more than $1,000.
Unidentified Man: This in American dollars. What we have here is $ 9--915.
SANFORD: Wow. That's good.
WALLACE: That's--
SANFORD: That's great, and that's two months.
Unidentified Man: Two months' supply, yeah.
SANFORD: Unbelievable.
(Footage of pharmacist and seniors)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) The pharmacist asked us not to identify him, because, under Canadian law, he is not supposed to fill prescriptions from U.S. doctors unless they're countersigned by a Canadian doctor. But he sympathizes with these seniors, and he told us the drugs he sold these women are the very same drugs they would get in the United States.
By whatever name, by whatever package, these are the same drugs here that we buy under these names in the United States? And as far as you know--
Unidentified Man: But as far as I know, there's no--there's not a s--there's not a hint of a difference, you know, between either drug.
(Footage of pharmacist with drugs; Representative Tom Allen)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And why are the seniors' drugs so much less there? We asked US Congressman Tom Allen of Maine, who had requested a congressional study.
Representative TOM ALLEN (Maine) [D-Maine]: The Canadians don't let the pharmaceutical companies take advantage of their citizens, and they do it in two ways. One, there's a national price review board that makes sure that maximum prices are set for new drugs. And second, each of the provinces has a health care plan that covers at least seniors and the poor. And they have market power. Those plans are able to negotiate lower prices.
WALLACE: They buy in bulk.
ALLEN: That's right.
WALLACE: And so buying in bulk, they get a deep discount. Just like the HMOs or the Veterans Administration or whatever here in the United States, buy in bulk and get a discount.
ALLEN: That's right.
(Footage of pharmacist, seniors and Wallace; Allen)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) So without any bulk discount on their drugs, according to the recent congressional study, senior citizens like Viola and Lena are paying for their drugs, on average, more than twice as much as most other Americans. Congressman Allen has proposed legislation that would allow the government to buy drugs in bulk for seniors. But the pharmaceutical industry has harshly criticized his proposal. It's government-mandated price controls, they say.
ALLEN: The most profitable industry in the country is charging the highest prices in the world to people who can least afford it, and many of them are our seniors. And that is simply wrong.
WALLACE: Are you saying that the drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies of America, are gouging the seniors?
ALLEN: Yes, they are.
(Footage of Allen and Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And later on he told us--
ALLEN: What really bothers me about this industry is that they are, you know, spending millions of dollars to stop the kind of reform that America's seniors need. They're trying to stop this discount approach that I've advocated. They're trying to stop any prescription drug benefit under Medicare, as it's currently constituted. And, you know, the weight of that industry, the amount of financial resources that it's able to bring to bear, both in Washington and through television around the country, is formidable.
(Excerpt from commercial)
(Footage from commercial)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Fact is, the industry has launched a $ 30 million advertising campaign attacking various proposals to expand Medicare to pay for seniors' drugs.
(Excerpt from commercial)
WALLACE: We asked the top 10 US pharmaceutical manufacturers to respond to Congressman Allen's charges, but not one of them would answer our questions on camera. They referred us instead to their trade association. But they, too, declined an interview, unless it was live and unedited.v
(Footage of Alan Holmer)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) While they wouldn't talk to us, the trade association's president, Alan Holmer, had said in a previously taped and edited interview with the CBS Evening News that proposals like Representative Allen's will cripple research and development of new drugs.
ALAN HOLMER: The United States has an environment that nurtures biomedical research right now. If Congress changes that, it's gonna reduce pharmaceutical R&D, and it's gonna make it far less likely that the companies are gonna continue to be able to come out with the new cures and the new treatments to the extent that we have been able to do i--in the past dozen or so years.
WALLACE: We keep hearing that the pharmaceutical industry says, 'Hey, if government gets involved in this, this means price controls, and we don't want price controls.'
KOURPIAS: It's not about price controls. We want the industry to make profits. We're not against profits, but how many profits are they talking about?
WALLACE: You also hear that if the cost of these drugs to seniors goes down, it's gonna hurt research and development in new drugs, the very drugs that these old folks are going to need in the future.
KOURPIAS: Absolutely not.
WALLACE: Why?
KOURPIAS: It's not going to affect it again. Right now their profits are three times what they put into research and development. And billions of dollars are being spent at the National Institute of Health for the invention of new drugs. That helps that industry.
WALLACE: So when they cry poverty--
KOURPIAS: There's no truth to it.
SANFORD: I feel like a victim. And I also feel like a fugitive, that I have to leave the United States to go over the border and come to Canada to get over a $ 1,000 break on my insur--on my medication.
QUIRION: I've worked hard all my life. I never was on welfare. I never collected unemployment. I've worked till the age of--from the age of 15 till 67. And I get out of w--and I've never had to pay my insurance. When I worked, my employer paid the insurance. And it's the first time in my life, after retirement and all that hard work, that I cannot afford prescriptions.
WALLACE: Apparently Viola Quirion will have to wait, and wait some more, for help from her government. Last Wednesday, senior Republicans in the Congress said they do not have enough time this year to address what the elderly are after: Medicare coverage of their prescription drugs.
--Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, October 17, 1999. (Repeated July 1, 2001)