As Drug Costs Rise, Bending the Law Is One Remedy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NYT
Lee Higman, a 71-year-old artist from Bellevue, Idaho, who considers herself a law-abiding citizen, was shocked last month when she got a notice from the Food and Drug Administration telling her: “A mail shipment addressed to you from a foreign country is being held.”
The 90 tablets of Vagifem, prescribed by her physician, that she had ordered from a Canadian pharmacy had been impounded as an illegal drug at Los Angeles International Airport.
First marketed in 1988, Vagifem estrogen tablets are used by millions of women to relieve symptoms of menopause. There is no generic version available in the United States, and brand-name drugs are expensive here. So about five years ago, Mrs. Higman started ordering the tablets from Canada, where a year’s supply that would cost about $1,000 in the United States sells for under $100.
“The price went up. And we’d lost a lot on the stock market, and we’re living on fixed incomes,” Mrs. Higman, who is an artist, said in an interview. She and her husband, a writer, are covered by Medicare. In an e-mail to the Food and Drug Administration, she sought the release of the package, explaining, “When it became economically imperative I ordered it from Canada, a country with strict drug requirements.”
(More here.)
Lee Higman, a 71-year-old artist from Bellevue, Idaho, who considers herself a law-abiding citizen, was shocked last month when she got a notice from the Food and Drug Administration telling her: “A mail shipment addressed to you from a foreign country is being held.”
The 90 tablets of Vagifem, prescribed by her physician, that she had ordered from a Canadian pharmacy had been impounded as an illegal drug at Los Angeles International Airport.
First marketed in 1988, Vagifem estrogen tablets are used by millions of women to relieve symptoms of menopause. There is no generic version available in the United States, and brand-name drugs are expensive here. So about five years ago, Mrs. Higman started ordering the tablets from Canada, where a year’s supply that would cost about $1,000 in the United States sells for under $100.
“The price went up. And we’d lost a lot on the stock market, and we’re living on fixed incomes,” Mrs. Higman, who is an artist, said in an interview. She and her husband, a writer, are covered by Medicare. In an e-mail to the Food and Drug Administration, she sought the release of the package, explaining, “When it became economically imperative I ordered it from Canada, a country with strict drug requirements.”
(More here.)
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