Trump's Drug Importation Plan Faces Significant Hurdles

By Aine Cryts 

Amid an ongoing outcry against rising drug costs, the Trump administration recently introduced two importation pathways to reduce what U.S. residents pay for drugs.

Under the Safe Importation Action Plan, the first pathway would allow states, wholesalers and pharmacists to propose to HHS demonstration projects for importing certain drugs from Canada. Under the second pathway, drug manufacturers could import non-U.S. countries' versions of their drugs into the United States.

What do health plan executives need to worry about with these two pathways? Not much, at least not in the next couple of years, according to Jigar Thakkar, Pharm.D., a managing director at FTI Consulting.

"There are so many hurdles that this isn’t something that's going to happen tomorrow or in the next year or two," Thakkar says. The hurdles include passage of legislation to allow biologics such as insulin to be imported and the ability of drugs imported from other countries to be tracked via FDA-TRACK, the FDA's agency-wide performance system that monitors drugs during their journey from manufacturer to distributors to pharmacies.

Another significant hurdle is pushback from interest groups in Canada. Bloomberg News reported that the Canadian Medical Association and 14 other groups sent a letter to Canada Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor protesting the Trump administration's moves.

Deb Devereaux, senior vice president of pharmacy at Gorman Health Group, isn't optimistic about the success of the first pathway where drugs would be imported to the United States from Canada. "The bottom line is the Canadian drug supply would be exhausted in 16 months with all the U.S. states trying to avail themselves of Canadian drugs," she says.

From RADAR on Drug Benefits