Drug Importation...what are we thinking?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Prescription-Drugs.html
Now states are initiating their own importation 'laws', regs...
Argh!!! as Charlie Brown would say. Pricing is important, but what about safety. There are so many issues around this it's impossible to state them all, but what's for certain is that each state cannot start initiating separate regs to import drugs.

Though I work for a pharmaceutical-"not so giant"-giant, I am speaking from a concerned consumer and a health care professional/pharmacist perspective. It was ingrained, and drilled into my head in pharmacy school that the FDA was the US's superior agency in reviewing safety and efficacy for products approved in the US, and I've seen this at work in my various roles within the pharma industry. Working within drug information and safety surveillance in an International division for one company, I saw first hand how other countries operate - how much less stringent reviews are completed, and more relaxed practices are in place every day with under dosing, unapproved uses, and now, more than ever, fraud.

While pricing remains an issue, and most Americans struggle to pay for medications, choosing between groceries and meds (or cigarettes!), the pricing is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Deaths will need to occur before anyone, or any state realizes this - as they band-aid the situations with these relaxex importation regs. That is sad. Because, the real problem is too massive to handle with one new law on the books.

The overall healthcare situation is at fault here. Managed care has driven costs up rather than contain them, which was their initial mission. Insurance providers raise costs daily, causing employers to make tough choices in the amount of coverage they're going to provide their employees, and putting greater burdens on the employees. Tests are run in hospitals and in various health settings just because they can be, rather than they should be. The healthcare system is an intricate web of policies, practices and people -- it cannot be fixed by price guaging, price controls, or foreign drug importation.