Senate candidate takes entourage to Tijuana to prove point

LAS VEGAS - In a bid to bolster his claim that seniors are being ripped off by drug prices, Democratic Senate candidate Ed Bernstein has taken a Nevada entourage to Tijuana, Mexico for prescription price shopping.

With a pharmacy technician in tow to verify the prescriptions were filed with suitable medicines, Bernstein made the trip Tuesday with seven Nevada seniors, one disabled person and three staff members.

The Las Vegas personal injury attorney picked up the $2,000 tab for the trip, which Republican candidate John Ensign labeled a ''campaign stunt.''

The eight Nevadans who lined up to buy prescriptions at the Farmacia Gusher saved at least $945 on the 43 prescriptions they purchased - ranging from a $20 savings by one participant to $305 by another.

Las Vegas pharmacy technician Shaun Woodard checked the medicines to make sure they were the equivalent of what the eight would have bought in Nevada. He rejected a handful of the medicines the Mexican pharmacist was ready to sell to the Nevadans.

Frances Nunes, 68, liked the savings but said she would be afraid to make the trip on her own.

''I wouldn't know what to get,'' she said.

The widow spends about $325 a month on prescription drugs and lives on $1,143 a month from Social Security. She pays $108 for a Medigap policy and was told that adding prescription drug coverage would cost $120 a month, an amount she said she could not afford.

Bernstein initiated the trip to demonstrate that if drug companies can sell their medicines cheaper in Mexico, they should sell them cheaper in the United States.

Bernstein said even he was surprised by the price differences.

Marjorie Scott spent $4.70 for 30 Claritin pills in Tijuana and pays $43 for the same amount in Nevada.

Thirty pills of the popular blood pressure medicine Vasotec costs $38 in the United States, but a generic sells for $3.60 in Mexico. However, that was one of the medications rejected by Woodard, who said the Mexican generic pills weren't equivalent.

''I'm not encouraging people to come here and buy drugs,'' Bernstein said in a Tijuana pharmacy that was screened by Woodard and a Bernstein aide on Monday. ''I want our people to stay in the U.S. and pay the same price.''

Bernstein supports a bill that would allow middlemen - wholesalers and pharmacies - to buy drugs outside the United States and re-import them, presumably passing on some of the savings.

The pharmaceutical industry says prescription drugs are often cheaper in other countries because those countries impose price controls.

The drug industry also contends that some foreign medications are counterfeits. Many of the Nevada seniors expressed that concern before the trip, but Woodard allayed those fears.

Ensign questioned Bernstein's trip.

''I really do understand we have a tremendous problem in this state and country providing access to affordable medicine for seniors, but I'm not about to sign off on a campaign stunt that puts Nevada seniors at risk by relying on health and safety standards of Tijuana drug wholesalers, until substantial safety questions have been resolved,'' Ensign said Monday.

Bernstein and Ensign have opposite positions on how to help seniors pay for expensive drugs when Medicare doesn't cover prescription costs.

Bernstein wants Congress to include drug coverage in Medicare as an entitlement for all seniors. Ensign favors a system to help seniors buy insurance coverage, much like the plan Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn is working to implement.