Are prescriptions from US doctors/medical centers honored in Canadian pharmacies, or do you need to have some special authorization? I have heard of people from the US taking their scripts to Canada so I know this is done. Any help/experience would be appreciated.

For your information, here (attached below) is a recent newspaper story on a related topic.
The Boston Globe and the Miami Herald also have stories (available on line) on the sales of prescription drugs to US customers by Canadian pharmacies.

I hope that this answers your question, at least partially.

Aug. 31, 2003. 08:56 AM
TORONTO STAR BUSINESS COLUMNISTS
DRUGGERNAUT
The world's largest drug company is unrelenting in pursuit of its business interests

DAVID OLIVE
TORONTO STAR

Starting last January, three giant drug makers had taken extraordinary steps to restrict their sales in Canada to pharmacies that agreed not to sell their products back into the U.S. market. Soaring drug prices have put many leading prescription drugs out of the reach of millions of Americans.

But it was earlier this month, when U.S. drug maker Pfizer Inc. joined ranks with those firms, that the issue of so-called "drug re-importation" became red-hot.

It's now a rallying cry among defiant U.S. federal legislators poised next month to legalize imports of cheap drugs from Canada and other industrialized countries in order to curb America's spiralling prescription-drug costs, which rose 14 per cent last year to $161 billion (U.S.).

And in Canada, Pfizer's action threw a scare into both traditional pharmacists and the new Internet-based pharmacies, many based in Western Canada, that sell to a burgeoning U.S. clientele. They now fear a shortage of supply in Canada for some of the most popular medicines.

For about four years, the upstart Canadian online pharmacies had developed a flourishing trade in selling brand-name drugs to low-income Americans for discounts averaging about 40 per cent.

Confronted with the threats earlier this year from GlaxoSmithKline PLC, AstraZeneca PLC and Wyeth Co. to cut them off, the Canadian discounters seemed to cope easily enough by obtaining supplies from Ireland, Australia and other countries whose drug prices, like Canada's, are far lower than those in the United States.

It was Pfizer's move to cut off 46 online pharmacies in Canada that has shaken the industry. For the first time, the cross-border pharmacies began to acknowledge that a Pfizer-induced scarcity of some of North America's most-prescribed medications would force even the discounters to raise their prices on the estimated $650 million (U.S.) worth of drugs they now sell in the United States.

"When it's 7 per cent of your business being taken away, you can manage," cross-border pharmacist Andy Troszok of Calgary told the Wall Street Journal a few days after Pfizer said he'd have to stop serving U.S. clients or lose access to Pfizer drugs.

"But now it's four [drug companies], including the world's largest [Pfizer], and that presents a substantial impediment to business," said Troszok.

Troszok is vice-president of the discounters' trade group, the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.

The power of Pfizer extends beyond its status, achieved through recent mergers, as the biggest drug company the world has ever seen. With the industry's largest line-up of so-called "blockbuster" drugs that generate at least $1 billion (U.S.) a year in sales, including Viagra, Zoloft and Lipitor, the New York-based Pfizer is the industry's first superpower.

With 2002 sales of $52.2 billion (U.S.), Pfizer is more than 40 per cent larger than its closest competitor, Johnson & Johnson Inc. After its stunning $150-billion (U.S.) takeover spree of the past three years in which it acquired rivals Warner-Lambert Co. and Pharmacia Corp., Pfizer now holds the marketing rights to eight of the world's top 25 best-selling drugs.

Pfizer's army of 13,000 "detail men," who give detailed descriptions of the firm's products in sales pitches to doctors, far exceeds the size of rival sales forces. And with an annual R&D budget of $7.1 billion (U.S.), Pfizer's research operations have eclipsed those of the U.S. National Institutes of Health?for decades the leading source of primary research on which the drug industry relies.

All that prowess translates into a Pfizer customer base of 165 million people worldwide, and a market capitalization trailing only that of General Electric Co. The fledgling chemical business launched in Brooklyn in 1849 by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart is now the world's second-most valuable company.

And Pfizer doesn't hesitate to throw its weight around.

Last week, Pfizer warned Germany that job security for the company's 6,000 employees there has been put at risk by chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's comprehensive plan to rein in healthcare costs?including expenditures on drugs.

Lest its resolve be doubted, Pfizer has already announced it will uproot its German R&D operation and relocate it in Britain, which has a more industry-friendly regulatory regime than the Continent.

In its own backyard, Pfizer has demanded that Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm make her state more inviting to the drug industry. The drug makers oppose efforts by Michigan and other states to control their drug costs by, among other things, dropping some high-cost medicines from their Medicaid programs for low-income and disabled Americans.

At the same time, Pfizer is pulling the plug on its extensive R&D operations in Kalamazoo, the southwestern Michigan birthplace of Upjohn Co., one of the many prominent drug makers that have been consolidated into Pfizer.

Civic officials in Kalamazoo lobbied furiously on Pfizer's behalf in Lansing, the state capital, and managed to obtain R&D tax credits and other benefits for Pfizer. Yet Pfizer is pulling up stakes anyway, and in the bargain appears not to be complying with federal requirements that it give the town adequate prior notice of the timing and severity of planned layoffs.

"We have been reduced to pleading like a beggar on the street for this company to do the basic things that they have a responsibility to this community to do," Barry Broome, chief economic-development officer for the town and an erstwhile Pfizer champion, complained last week in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

"Tell us what your plans are in Kalamazoo and help us through this transition," Broome told Pfizer, recalling company CEO Hank McKinnell's earlier promise to do so. "This community deserves to keep its dignity intact."

On the world scene, Pfizer is just as unrelenting in pursuit of its interests. After talks last week in Geneva among the 146 members of the World Trade Organization, the group agreed, after years of negotiations, to grant poor countries better access to drugs for coping with AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other epidemics.

Pfizer was a leader among its global peers in seeking to impose major restrictions on that access.

The restrictions include meddlesome requirements that cheap generic copies of the industry's brand-name drugs be manufactured in unusual pill shapes and unique packaging to discourage smugglers from selling the drugs in the U.S. And that, say critics, greatly undermines the humanitarian intent of the drawn-out initiative.

Describing the then-still-tentative WTO agreement as a travesty, Oxfam official Celine Charveriat said last Thursday that the deal contained "so much red tape and so many obstacles that if it were accepted, developing countries would still struggle to get access to cheap medicines, and thousands of people would continue to die unnecessarily."

Just as Pfizer and its competitors have relied on the U.S. government's hardball negotiating tactics on their behalf at the WTO, the Bush administration appointees now running the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have leapt to the industry's defence on the re-importation issue.

The agency has repeatedly warned Congress that its flirtation with legalizing the importation of cheap drugs from Canada and elsewhere is a danger to public health, opening the door to counterfeits and improperly made drugs.

The FDA last week also warned California that it would be breaking federal laws by going ahead with a plan to buy prescription drugs from Canada for state employees. The FDA's message is aimed at the many states contemplating similar measures.

And in recent weeks, the FDA has intensified its effort to shut down U.S. firms that act as local brokers that facilitate drug purchases by U.S. consumers from the Canadian online pharmacies.

That is an obvious payoff for the industry's exhaustive lobbying efforts in Washington. The industry's 623 registered lobbyists in the capital outnumber the 535 members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Pfizer alone employs 82 of those favour-seekers.

But where consumer groups see a threatening Leviathan, Pfizer regards itself as besieged. It fears a host of troubles on the horizon. And its worries are not unjustified.

The all-important demographic trends are favourable enough. The Baby Boom generation, the wealthiest in history, is heading into retirement years in which it will become reliant on the unprecedented number of prolonged-use "maintenance" drugs now available.

But the 1990s legacy of sustained double-digit price hikes for drugs has finally spurred a backlash. Demand for prescription drugs in the U.S., by far the global industry's most lucrative market, is expected to rise a mere 1 per cent this year, after a decade of roaring growth.

Just read these 2 posts about drugs being cheaper in Canada than in US. My husband works for one of the larger drug companies so I just wanted to chime in after reading that lengthy article posted by Borealis.

The reason drugs are cheaper to buy in Canada is that the Canadian government is its own HMO for all Canadians. They have national government healthcare which means the Canadian people pay high taxes to support "free" healthcare for Canadians.

Because the government is the country's HMO, the government will only pay so much for all the drugs in Canada. So the drug companies have to sell the drugs to Canada for cheap prices, sometimes at cost or less. So that is why you pay less in Canada.

Unfortunately, we Americans kind of get stuck paying a lot more to make up for the lack of money the companies make from Canada. So our prices are higher to compensate for that.

People don't realize that it takes about 10 to 15 years to develop and test each new drug. It costs the drug companies millions of dollars to test and develop them. Most of them do not make it to the market for various reasons so when one does, the company must recoup its costs and must do so before their patent expires and the drug goes generic.

I know we would all love to have 100 per cent safe drugs that are really cheap. But it doesn't work that way. IF the government starts to tell drug companies they can only sell their drugs for a certain cost, the companies will not be able to operate and will shut down. Then where do people think all the wonderful new drugs will come from?

What would happen if GM had to sell all of its cars to Canada really cheap and then all of sudden, people in the US starting buying all their cars in Canada or from Canadian websites? (I know it doesn't make sense.)

HOw long do you think GM would stay in business if it couldn't cover its costs and make a profit?

Just had to make my point because people don't understand why drugs are cheaper in Canada.

I'm glad that the last responder qualified that her husband works for the drug industry since her "explanation" is so routinely served out by them. The issue isn't "safety." The drugs which US residents seek from Canada are sold to Canada from US drug companies and are exactly the same as sold in the US but sometimes for many hundreds of times higher in price. This pap that US residents pay higher drug prices because the poor drug companies sell at a loss to Canada is laughable. I will agree that the drug companies do not make as much profit in Canada, but their margin of profit is still healthy.
There is a large movement on the Hill about permitting US residents to go to Canada for their drugs, and certain states themselves are seriusly considering it for their health care programs. The FDA cautions aganist this, of course, because this administration is incredibly pro-business. If the FDA was genuinely concerned over the quality of the drugs, it could easily draft regulations limiting the kinds of drugs which US residents would be permitted to buy trans-border and thereby ensure quality control, rather than take the extreme position it has taken.
The major drug companies are now hammering Canadian pharmacists who sell to US residents, threatening to cut off their supply of drugs. A typical (and not unexpected) response.

Yes, it takes a lot of money for R&D. And yes the drug companies do provide lots of drugs to low income patients and 3rd world countries, to their credit. But, they do not lose money at it. Their patents on their drugs is so long that they make a bundle before they lose their patent to generics. They also spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and add campaigns to ensure their monopoly, money which is added to the price of their products to recoup!
The FDA could also revamp their cumbersome approval process without jeopardizing quality control. This would help reduce the price of drugs over the long term.

But, it is not a question of quality or safety, but the huge profits at stake for the major drug companies.

I apologize for posting that very very long article earlier!!

Some facts about Canadian drug cost coverage:
In Canada - drugs received in a hospital setting are essentially paid for but the government (because the gov't provides the budget for hospitals); however, out-of-hospital prescription drugs are paid for by employer or private insurance. However, if you are a senior, or low income, or don't have employer and qualify for gov't covered drug insurance, the gov't provides drug coverage, and with the exception of seniors, these groups must pay a premium for the coverage.
Even with coverage, not all insurance plans and not all drugs are covered for 100% of the cost. It is possible that some drugs are not covered at all.
The drug insurance coverage is actually more complicated than my brief description above, but those are the basic facts.

The difference in drug prices between the US and Canada, while being significant, is not the "hundreds of times" that was suggested above.
It is important to note that this difference may not be significant for a high income earner, but will be very significant to a person on a fixed income.

Big pharma companies have to realize that there would be no demand for drugs at Canadian prices if the same drugs were affordable in the US. No one is forcing Americans to fill their prescriptions in Canada.

The scenario that drugs take 10 to 15 years to develop and pharma therefore has to recoup costs is a recent one (historically), because in the past ten to fifteen years drug development has become much more labour intensive, specialized, and subject to increasing regulatory scrutiny and "hoops" to jump through in terms of clinical trials.

There has to be a better way to solve this problem than adopting an adversarial stance.
There is no guarantee that if the FDA shuts down the Canadian presription pipeline for US seniors, all the money spent on prescription drugs is going to find its way back into the pockets of pharmaceutical companies.
Seniors may simply opt out of purchasing drugs and turn to other less expensive ways of treating their ailments.

And, as the initial question in this thread indicates, it is not that easy to have your prescription filled in Canada - you have to know where and how to do it.