Importation isn't a silver bullet to lower drug prices

Details: HHS announced 2 pathways for drug importation yesterday. The first — which is a more traditional form of importation — would allow patients to import certain drugs to from Canada.

• Notable exceptions are biologics — including insulin — controlled substances and intravenously injected drugs.
• States, wholesalers and pharmacies would submit demonstration proposals to HHS, which would be time-limited and subject to safety and cost conditions.

Between the lines: This will likely take years to implement, although several states have already expressed interest in taking advantage of it.

Yes, but: There's a lot of reasons to be skeptical about its impact — especially because Canada doesn't have large quantities of drugs compared to the U.S. supply and it's not thrilled about the idea of sending them to us.

• But still, "this rule could have a lot of impact in specific cases, such as with single-source drugs in rare diseases where there is a massive disparity between Canadian and U.S. prices," conservative health wonk Avik Roy tweeted.

The second pathway would allow drugmakers to import versions of FDA-approved drugs that they're selling in other countries, or to sell the same drug at a different price in the U.S. by working around their contracts with supply chain middlemen.

• It appears to address complaints by drug companies:, according to HHS' outline of its plan. But "it’s not clear to me why manufacturers would want to do that," said Vanderbilt's Stacie Dusetzina.

The other side: "Rather than surrender the safety of Americans by importing failed polices from single-payer countries, we should work on solutions here at home that would lower patient out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter," said Steve Ubl, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in a statement.

The bottom line: "By definition, importing is not going to be a large-scale solution," Dusetzina said.