Posted At OZarks Local News

BY : Brian Monroe

Across the country, from Springfield to Florida and elsewhere, people are opening their mail to find letters from government regulators instead of the medicine they were expecting.

Charles Barker, 75, for example, goes to Melbourne, Fla., every few weeks to pick up his mail-order prescription medications. He gets them from Canada to save more than $300 a month.But when he checked his post office box recently, he didn't find his three-month supply of glaucoma medicine. Instead, he found a letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying his medicine had been confiscated.

He never got it back. The pharmacy in Canada had to resend it to him. He hopes it doesn't get intercepted again.

"If it was marijuana, fine, grab it," Barker said. But, he added, "these are the same drugs I can get at a local pharmacy, but there, I would pay twice the price."

Experts described Barker's experience as a "spot check." But many retirees and others without insurance are finding it more difficult to slip their prescriptions past the FDA or find a local outlet willing to help them find cheaper medicine across the border — a $1 billion industry.

In Springfield, Budget-Meds manager Linda Olson said a handful of her customers have gotten similar letters from the FDA in place of the drugs they had ordered from Canada. When that happens, she merely reorders them and they seem to arrive without delay, she said. "It's just very random," she said.

"The letters state they're not breaking the law, but the FDA had to seize it because it was illegal," Olson said. The FDA seized the package and apparently returned it to the pharmacy that sent it, she said.

"These are isolated cases, but (the FDA) shouldn't be interfering to begin with," Olson said.

To keep profits up, many of the Internet and mail-order pharmacies that claim they are based in Canada have brought in "international" buying partners, meaning your prescription could be coming from the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, Chile, South Korea or other countries.

While some provisions to allow the importation of Canadian drugs have pushed through Congress, the FDA has blocked them from being implemented by saying it can't certify drugs from another country are safe, even if the foreign pharmacy from which they originate is legitimate and licensed.

The FDA told one customer that his drug sent from Great Britain was an "unapproved drug" — one manufactured in a foreign country or any drug manufactured in the United States, exported, then re-imported. The drugs were cholesterol treatment Lipitor and diabetes medicine Actos.

Olson said her company has seven affiliated pharmacies including ones in the United States and Great Britain. "That way, the customer gets a choice of whichever one is least expensive. Lipitor is cheaper from Great Britain than Canada, so the customer chose to order from Great Britain," she said.

"We're not disturbed by it," Olson said. "It's an annoyance, but I wouldn't call it a minor annoyance because it delays shipments to the customer by a couple of weeks."

It doesn't deter her customers, she said. "My customers, except the new ones, are all repeat customers who have gotten used to the convenience and the savings."

Tarah Graham, marketing director for Canada Direct Drugs in western Missouri, has seen a few delays, "but we also have kind of built that into our orders. ... Most of our customers get them within a week, but we tell them to allow three," she said. Her company also calls customers about 10 weeks out after drugs have been shipped to remind them to reorder so they don't experience a delay. The company also tracks drug shipments from the time they leave the pharmacy, she said.

She said her customers have seen savings of 20 percent to 80 percent on drugs from Canada.

The FDA may say it doesn't trust drugs shipped from other countries, but Patricia and Robert Giefer of Springfield don't have a problem with them. They have ordered four drugs through Canadian pharmacies for more than two years, saved at least half the cost "and I really do trust it 100 percent," Robert Giefer said.

"I just hope our good senators and congressmen don't do anything to screw it up," Giefer said. "Big money does crazy things to us."

Some health experts say there is a seismic shift coming in the Canadian drug-importation business, with the upcoming Medicare drug benefit, called Part D, scheduled to kick off Jan. 1. Signup for the program begins Nov. 15.

Robert Giefer said he'll pass on Medicare Part D. "Suppose I take it and then the doctor prescribes a different medicine (not covered by his Medicare drug plan). I'd have to pay for it myself, anyway. ... I'm not paying as much for drugs as I would if I were paying the government," he added.

But Springfield resident John Bennett, who now gets a $125 drug for $70 through a Canadian pharmacy, nonetheless is considering going with a Medicare prescription drug plan.

"If they can get it down to where I can buy it here, I'd rather do that," Bennett said. "I'm not hung up on Canada or China, really. And I don't know why the government would get hung up on anyplace — when the shirts we wear come from China and everywhere else."

Linda Olson, with Budget-Meds in Springfield, said she's been giving out more (drug price) quotes in the past month than she's ever done as older adults compare Canadian drugs with those covered by the various Medicare drug program plans. If the $724 billion Medicare prescription drug plan works, it could be a wrecking ball to the U.S. component of the Canadian pharmacy industry, which already is in decline, said Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based independent research firm.

"Most of the demand for imported drugs are from seniors, and that will be dramatically reduced" with the new Medicare prescription program, Bast said. "The price difference is not as big, and people are saying it could be dangerous. I think the wind is out of the sails on drug importation."

The danger, Bast said, stems from the fact that Canadian pharmacies simply can't keep up with the demand for cheaper drugs.

As a result, "more and more drugs are 'trans-shipped' through Canada, but made in China and Pakistan," Bast said. "It's less and less safe to import drugs."

If Canada can't find a way to stop many of its pharmacies from sending its drugs to the United States, Cannon said, drug manufacturers could renegotiate the country's price controls and force up the prices for prescription medications.

Independent pharmacist Ross Clark is sympathetic to those who have gotten their medicines from Canada.

But, he said, in some cases, the price differential is not all that much between a Canadian pharmacy and a traditional local drugstore.

Clark, owner of the Suntree (Fla.) Pharmacy, said the "gulf of prices is closing" on some medicines. "We have a few customers that used Canadian drug markets. But, sometimes, we are still able to come up with better prices."