Show #257 Airing Sunday, May 23, 2004
Our neighbor to the north has given us lots of important things. These include ice hockey, Molson’s beer, lots of cold fronts, and a baseball team that the Indians can beat. And maybe most important, government price-fixed, low cost medications.
Yet our current state officials here in Ohio don’t know that there’s another country to our north. Really, it’s the truth! Here’s a picture of the official Ohio map of North America. See, there’s the United States, to our immediate north is Lake Erie, and then that’s it until you get to Greenland and Alaska.
Now you’re probably saying to yourselves. Wait a minute, what happened to Canada? Don’t our state officials know it’s up there? Well, to be honest, I think they probably do know it’s there. They just don’t want you to know it’s there.
Why not? Last year, at the behest of the big drug companies, Congress said it didn’t want Americans going to Canada to buy their medicines at half the price they cost in the United States. So to make sure you don’t take a trip to Canada to buy cheaper drugs, Ohio has decided to pretend Canada doesn’t exist.
The Ohio Insurance Department runs a hotline designed to help Ohioans make it through the prescription medicine maze. The Plain Dealer recently reported that this department has prohibited its hotline workers from even mentioning Canada.
Wanting to check this out further, I went to Ohio’s website. There’s not a word about Canada. The Ohio Insurance Department’s website says it’s designed “to help you navigate through the choices you now have concerning prescription drugs and Medicare,” and it calls itself a “one-stop educational resource center.” Well, it better go back to school, because it also fails to recognize that Canada exists.
After carefully scanning Ohio’s website, I thought maybe our officials know something I don’t. I mean, I work pretty hard. Maybe I missed the news about Canada disappearing.
So I checked Minnesota’s website. Guess what I found? On the main front page of the Minnesota website was a symbol for Minnesota Rx Connect. When you click on that, you can easily buy your prescription medicines at very low costs directly from Canadian pharmacies. In Canada!
Aren’t Minnesota state officials worried about the safety issues that have been raised by the drug companies to scare Americans from buying Canadian medicines? When asked, Minnesota’s governor reportedly responded with his own Question: “Where are the dead Canadians?”
Minnesota went even further. They set safety standards, sent state officials to visit Canadian pharmacies, and selected those that met its stringent criteria. Those pharmacies are featured on Minnesota’s website.
But then I thought, maybe Minnesota missed the news, too, that Canada no longer exists. So I checked Wisconsin’s website, and New Hampshire’s website. And guess what? They also recognize the nation of Canada. And they make it easy to purchase low cost medications directly from Canadian pharmacies.
Clearly our current batch of elected officials here in Ohio have a blind spot when it comes to looking north. Maybe it’s time to bring back former Governor James Rhodes. Remember his proposal to build a bridge over Lake Erie to Canada? Not only did he know that Canada existed, but he also wanted to eliminate the “Rhode” blocks that prevent Ohioans from getting there. I guess Governor Rhodes was just ahead of his time.
