Screaming For Relief

Here is a paradox of America's health-care system: the U.S. invents most of the world's great prescription drugs, but thousands of Americans cross into Canada and Mexico to buy them. Some go on their own; others ride buses in organized tours sponsored by senior-citizen advocacy groups. Either way, they want medications that salve ills from leukemia to ulcers, mood disorders to high cholesterol. These are the identical life-improving, death-defying drugs that they would get at home--but for a fraction of the cost. And so it is on a November day in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just over the bridge from Laredo, Texas. LOS PRECIOS MAS BAJOS GARANTIZADOS, declares the sign at Farmacia el Fenix: "The lowest prices guaranteed."

Nuevo Laredo is a prescription Mecca for many in the Southwest. That's what brought Marvin Bryan here. A feisty 73-year-old long-distance trucker and former reading teacher from Mesa, Ariz., he had heard about Nuevo Laredo's prescription-drug bonanza from his trucker pals. Clutching a plastic bag, he is pleased with his purchases, which include Augmentin, Proscar and that modern elixir, Viagra. Nearby, Bill Gibson picks up Tagamet, the stomach medication, for a mere $7.50--far less than the $62 he says he would pay back in Oklahoma City, Okla., "even though it's made by the same company as the stuff I get in the U.S."

While the high cost of drugs is making Americans cross the border, in Washington it's making politicians nervous. Last Friday Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert found his Illinois office besieged by 300 angry protesters wielding prescription-drug bottles. In Washington, Al Gore staged an event at a local pharmacy to denounce the cost of prescription drugs. In Chicago his Democratic opponent, former Senator Bill Bradley, told health-care professionals that he was committed to providing a Medicare benefit for drugs. And in New Hampshire, Republican Senator John McCain, who is moving up in the polls against front runner George W. Bush, expressed concern that some drug companies were using sneaky legislative maneuvers to extend their lucrative patents on pharmaceutical drugs--a move that would keep cheaper generic drugs from consumers. For their part, congressional Democrats held a pep rally last week to show they care about the problem. One speaker: senatorial wannabe Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That's partly because these Democrats are convinced that the issue may help them retake control of the House of Representatives. In fact, an internal poll for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted by Geoff Garin shows 75% of Americans supporting the Bill Clinton idea of extending Medicare coverage to prescription drugs. Even a top G.O.P. election official concedes, "The issue is killing us."