(AP) TUCSON, Arizona
A new company plans to offer cross-border bus rides from the southern state of Arizona to Mexico for people who want to buy prescription drugs there at a fraction of U.S. prices.
The company, Prescription Express, aims to tap into the relatively common practice among border town residents of traveling to Mexico to buy prescription drugs, which can cost half as much as in the United States. While similar services are available in other border areas, this would be one of the bigger, more organized businesses.
Customers will pay a dlrs 25 annual membership fee to the company, then dlrs 20 for each round trip from Tucson, Arizona, to Nogales, Mexico, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the south, said Ron Swager, who started the company with Citizen Auto Stage, which owns Gray Line Tours.
The trips are expected to begin next month, sooner if there's enough demand. "We're ready to go, almost immediately," Swager said.
The luxury bus will accommodate 54 customers and one licensed pharmacist to answer their questions along the way, Swager told the Arizona Daily Star.
Such trips are also common along the Canadian border, where busloads of elderly people from northern states regularly cross into Canada to fill prescriptions.
The practice is permitted by the U.S. government, which allows Americans to bring back a three-month supply of medication for their personal use.
Swager cited hikes in U.S. prescription drug prices and decisions by Tucson's two Medicare HMOs, or health maintenance organizations, to drop brand-name drug coverage next year as reasons for the new venture.
In Tucson area, a one-month supply of the arthritis pain reliever Celebrex costs about dlrs 78, but costs about dlrs 59 in Nogales, said Marty Wicker, one of two registered pharmacists who will work full-time with Prescription Express.
And 20 tablets of Prilosec, the purple pill that controls acid reflux, costs dlrs 84.50 here _ but only dlrs 40 in Nogales, Wicker said.
Local experts expressed some skepticism, but said Prescription Express is a logical response to rising drug costs in America.
"It is crazy that our health-care system requires people to jump through all these hoops simply to get affordable medications," said Stewart Grabel, ombudsman for the Pima Council on Aging. "I would rather people shopped locally, but the way that our system is set up, people are not able to afford it."
Prescription Express members must bring a prescription from an American doctor _ not to buy the medication, but to show to U.S. Customs inspectors. All prescription drug purchases must be declared at the border, U.S. Customs Service spokesman Roger Maier said.
On the Net:
U.S. Customs: http://www.customs.gov
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