Chicago's new chemist

If one judges the public mood of the Irish Republic by the letters pages of the Irish Times, the dominant issue this summer has been the country's high prices, glaringly obvious to everyone back from their holliers elsewhere in Europe. And then there are all those Irish people headed to the US to do their shopping, helped along by the weak Dubya dollar.

But now comes a sign that Ireland is far cheaper than the US in at least one aspect -- prescription medicine. Today the state of Illinois announced that it is setting up an Internet site to allow residents to purchase their medication not just from Canada, from where there was already an active trade, but also Britain and Ireland. The state government has taken the position that you'll never beat the Irish (or the British, or the Canadians) when it comes to supplying medicine up to US standard (subs. req'd):

A spokeswoman for Gov. Blagojevich, a Democrat, said the three countries Illinois is focused on have "very advanced, very safe pharmaceutical systems,"

but the US Pharma lobby...is, surprise, surprise, not so sure:

Wanda Moebius, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents drug makers, said Illinois would not be able to guarantee that drugs said to be from Britain or Ireland really came from there. "We have serious safety concerns," Ms. Moebius said.
The brilliantly named Wanda seems to be unaware that verifying that a package really came from Ireland is easy -- just look for the mis-designed postage stamps on the outside.

More seriously, while the interest from Illinois in Irish medicines might be seen as a compliment, it's not guaranteed to be a good thing, as the reasons for their interest indicate:

The drug companies have pretty aggressively been shutting supplies to Canada, and we want to ensure that the supply will meet the demand," Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Mr. Blagojevich, said. "Ultimately, they can't shut down supplies to the world to keep prices high in the United States."

At this point, cast your minds back to your introductory economics course (undoubtedly your favourite) and recall that an increase in demand leads to higher prices. Put another way, Irish consumers benefit from the current practice of companies in trying to segment their market and charge lower prices in Ireland than in the US. Get ready for a new category of high prices letters to the Irish Times.