Canadian supplier drops drug-import plan
SPRINGFIELD -- The Canadian supplier of low-cost drugs to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's much-hyped but illegal drug-import program has dropped out, bemoaning the state's lip service to its promotion.
Pegasus Health Services Ltd. of Calgary, Alberta said Monday that it filled its last prescription Dec. 31 for I-SaveRx, a lower-cost prescription drug program that helped get Blagojevich impeached even as he continued to trumpet it as an effort to help people.
Company official Lewis Jorgenson says the program cost Pegasus hundreds of thousands of dollars but Illinois and the four other states that joined showed no follow-through. He would not specify how much the company, the only vendor for I-SaveRx, had lost.
"It looks good in the press, that they're starting the I-Save program, but they just talk about it, there's no action, so it's just a waste of everybody's time," Jorgenson told The Associated Press Monday.
A Blagojevich administration spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Blagojevich's Department of Healthcare and Family Services announced a contract renewal with Pegasus in July to extend the program to state employees and some retirees, shifting $450,000 from the existing mail-order drug program to I-SaveRx.
But state records show none of that money has been spent.
The illegal creation of I-SaveRx is one of the impeachment charges against Blagojevich, who is boycotting the Senate trial over his ouster that started Monday. The two-term Democrat instead was in New York appearing on talk shows to plead his case that the "unfair" trial attempted to persecute him for trying to aid the citizenry.
Among those efforts is I-SaveRx, which allowed him to go "to Canada to get cheaper medicines for our senior citizens so that they can afford their medicines and their groceries, a charge that they're trying to kick me out of office on," he told reporters Friday in Chicago.
But as of last summer, only 5,000 Illinoisans had participated in the four-year-old plan, up only about 1,300 from two years previous. Four partner states -- Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas and Vermont -- contributed about 1,600 more.
"None of the states have been active about making people aware of the program," Jorgenson said. "Even if you went onto the Web sites to get information about the program from any of the states, it's virtually impossible."
Jorgenson has started a new company, Genesis Health Group Inc., to continue promoting drug exports to smaller U.S. government bodies, corporations and unions.
A September 2006 review by Illinois Auditor General William Holland criticized the Blagojevich administration for creating an illegal program that had cost $1 million on promotion, travel and legal fees to that point, even though Pegasus bore the cost of the drugs and their shipment. The administration claimed participants had saved $4.5 million on drug costs.
The governor announced the program in October 2004 despite protests from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Federal law prohibits imports of foreign drugs, but officials don't always seem to enforce the law vigorously.
Jorgenson said occasional drug shipments were seized until the federal government cracked down in early 2007, taking and destroying up to $100,000 worth of drugs a month.
He said Illinois officials intervened with federal officials to stop the seizures so that delivery to patients could resume. Jorgenson said the current U.S. atmosphere can be much friendlier to drug imports.
But every time Jorgenson urged Illinois officials to push the program, he was greeted with "empty promises" of new states joining, he said. He said he tried to find another vendor for Illinois to sustain the program but was unsuccessful.