Mike Wallace Was a Real Newsman

The great TV news reporter Mike Wallace has died at the age of 93.  The man was a legend in the television news business, and it was with sadness that I read of his death today.

I worked with Mike Wallace only once, but it was a memorable story, and no less because I got to fly up to New York and watch the man do an interview up close and in action. 

He was an explosive questioner with tremendous energy, a good tan, and a slim and athletic figure even at age 82. 

His tolerance for nonsense was absolutely zero.  This was a lion, but it was not a lion in winter

In 1999, I was Director of Communications for the National Council of Senior Citizens (now called the Alliance for Retired Americans) and put together a four-page backgrounder on the price of prescription drugs. The first page listed the 10 drugs most commonly used by senior citizens and their retail price in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Also embedded in the piece was the story of Levamisol -- a sheep-worming medicine that NIH was using for colorectal cancer. When used to worm sheep (one dose every 6 months), the medicine was 6 cents a pill, but when given to humans (every day) to prevent colorectal cancer, the pill was $6 a tablet. Same dose, same manufacturer, same factory.

I faxed the backgrounder up to Don Hewitt, the creator of 60-Minutes. From what I gather, Mike Wallace picked it up out of the fax tray while he waited for Hewitt to get off the phone. In any case, it turned out that Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Wallace used 8 of the 10 drugs listed. They knew the U.S. price of these drugs and were amazed at the Canadian and Mexican prices, which were only one-third as much.

The pitch to 60 Minutes was a full story board treatment with visuals, interviews, script outline, etc. The bus was already lined up to go to Canada, I had the name and address of the drug factories in Puerto Rico where various drugs were made for all three markets, and I even had a Member of Congress and the senior citizens lined up to be interviewed.

The 60 Minutes piece that resulted turned out to be a significant policy-public moment in Washington. The first question of the first debate between Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. was on prescription drugs from Canada (I got a very nice email from Mike Wallace's producer the next morning), and the idea has consistently built up steam since then.

Today several states are now importing prescription drugs from Canada, the leadership of both political parties say they are for reimportation, and the American Medical Association has come out and endorsed the idea.

But have no illusion: this idea was kicked forward because Mike Wallace picked it up and made it happen.  He was a rare bird.  We will not see too many like him again, and the world is a poorer place for his passing.

• Related link: ** Bob Simons remembers

60 Minutes CBS July 1, 2001

WHY SO EXPENSIVE?
Seniors take a bus to Canada to be able to afford their prescription drugs on their limited income

MIKE WALLACE, co-host: Since we first broadcast this story back in 1999, there's been endless talk about how to help America's senior citizens pay for the expensive prescription drugs so many of them have to take to stay alive and well. Endless talk about it, but little action where it counts: in the US Congress. The unhappy fact is that substantial numbers of Americans, whose average annual income is $16,000 from their pensions and Social Security payments, have to shell out as much as a third of that just for their prescription drugs.


Ms. VIOLA QUIRION: By the time I pay my rent and I pay my supplement insurance, which don't cover prescriptions, I don't have much left over. (Footage of Viola Quirion at medicine cabinet; Quirion in living room; Quirion in kitchen)
|WALLACE: (Voiceover) Viola Quirion is a 73-year-old retiree from Waterville, Maine. She spends nearly a quarter of her $900 monthly income on the drugs her doctor has prescribed: Relafen for severe arthritis in her knees and back, and Prilosec for a stomach disorder. Never married, she worked for four decades in the local Hathaway shirt factory for a salary just above minimum wage. So you have just your Social Security...
Ms. QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: ...and your pension.
Ms. QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: And it's not enough.
Ms. QUIRION: That's right.
WALLACE: It would be enough without the drugs. Without the...
Ms. QUIRION: Well, without the drug--if the drugs weren't so expensive, it would m--be much better. I could live much better. I'd have a little--probably a little change at the end of the month. I wouldn't have to worry about how to get a--bread or a quart of milk or...
WALLACE: Is it that bad, really?
Ms. QUIRION: Oh, yes, it is that bad. It is that bad.

Mr. GEORGE KOURPIAS:We have thousands upon thousands of seniors that can't afford the medicine that's prescribed for them. We have them cutting pills in half. (Footage of George Kourpias and Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) George Kourpias was president of the National Council of Senior Citizens.
Mr. KOURPIAS: The average income of a senior in America is $16,000 a year. Fifteen million of them are not covered at all, have no prescription drug coverage.
WALLACE: Why aren't old folks protected by Medicare, as far as drug costs are concerned?
Mr. KOURPIAS: It's not part of the law. This is what we're trying to get done now. What we need to do is enact a universal, comprehensive prescription drug program under Medicare so everybody is covered. (Footage of National Council of Senior Citizens protest)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Many seniors who did have some drug coverage through private insurance plans lost it. In just 18 months, nearly a million American seniors were told by their HMOs or their health plans that their drugs will no longer be covered, and that's when seniors discovered there are places they can get their drugs cheaper: Mexico and Canada.
Mr. KOURPIAS: Well, what's happening is that seniors in America have to pay two or three times the price for a drug that is sold in either Mexico or Canada. (Footage of bus; seniors; seniors on bus; roadside as seen from bus; Carolyn Swift with Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And so the seniors' council organized and helped pay for several bus trips for seniors to go to Canada to buy their drugs. We went along on one of those trips. The bus started in Portland, Maine, drove across New Hampshire, then up through Vermont, picking up about 40 seniors along the way. One of the seniors we met: Carolyn Swift, a retired English professor. Professor
CAROLYN SWIFT: I feel that we are all--on this bus, we are refugees from the American health care system.
WALLACE: What do you mean?
Prof. SWIFT: We are, all of us, inadequately insured, struggling to take our medications, without which we will die. And thank goodness Canada's here. (Footage of Lena Sanford)


WALLACE: (Voiceover) Lena Sanford is a 73-year-old retiree from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And like most seniors who are having health difficulties, she has to take more drugs than the average American. You take how many drugs every day?
Ms. LENA SANFORD: I take about 16.
WALLACE: Sixteen?
Ms. SANFORD: Yeah.
WALLACE: What do you take?
Ms. SANFORD: I take six alone for my lung disease. I take pills for high blood pressure, anxiety, for arthritis. I got a whole list of things here.
WALLACE: How much every month for drugs?
Ms. SANFORD: My drugs comes to 13...
WALLACE: $1,365?
Ms. SANFORD: For what I'm paying here in the United States, it'd be one-third over in Canada. (Footage of Sanford)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Lena's insurance used to cover that $1,365, but as we said, like millions of other seniors across the country, her insurance plan recently stopped paying for her drugs. So she went to Canada, because it turns out the drugs she needs cost more than her total monthly income of $1,200.
Ms. SANFORD: You know what I feel like, Mike?
WALLACE: Hmm?
Ms. SANFORD: A convict.
WALLACE: A convict?
Ms. SANFORD: I'm g--I'm leaving this country to go to another country, going over the border to get my medication so that I can live. I think it's a disgrace. (Footage of bus; seniors and Wallace in drugstore)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) The bus crossed over to Canada from Vermont, and once there, we followed the seniors to a Montreal drugstore, where many of them had their prescriptions filled for about half the price they paid in the United States. Lena Sanford said that she saved more than $1,000. Unidentified Man: This in American dollars. What we have here is $9--915.
Ms. SANFORD: Wow. That's good.
WALLACE: That's...
Ms. SANFORD: That's great, and that's two months.
Unidentified Man: Two months' supply, yeah.
Ms. SANFORD: Unbelievable. (Footage of pharmacist and seniors)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) The pharmacist asked us not to identify him because, under Canadian law, he is not supposed to fill prescriptions from US doctors unless they're countersigned by a Canadian doctor. But he sympathizes with these seniors, and he told us the drugs he sold these women are the very same drugs they would get in the United States. By whatever name, by whatever package, these are the same drugs here that we buy under these names in the United States? And as far as you know... Unidentified Man: But as far as I know, there's no--there's not a s--there's not a hint of a difference, you know, between either drug. (Footage of pharmacist with drugs; Representative Tom Allen)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And why are the seniors' drugs so much less there? We asked US Congressman Tom Allen of Maine, who had requested a congressional study.

Representative TOM ALLEN (Maine): The Canadians don't let the pharmaceutical companies take advantage of their citizens, and they do it in two ways. One, there's a national price review board that makes sure that maximum prices are set for new drugs. And second, each of the provinces has a health care plan that covers at least seniors and the poor. And they have market power. Those plans are able to negotiate lower prices.
WALLACE: They buy in bulk.
Rep. ALLEN: That's right.
WALLACE: And so buying in bulk, they get a deep discount. Just like the HMOs or the Veterans Administration or whatever here in the United States, buy in bulk and get a discount. Rep. ALLEN: That's right. (Footage of pharmacist, seniors and Wallace; Allen)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) So without any bulk discount on their drugs, according to the congressional study, senior citizens like Viola and Lena are paying for their drugs, on average, more than twice as much as most other Americans. Congressman Allen has proposed legislation that would allow the government to buy drugs in bulk for seniors, but the pharmaceutical industry has harshly criticized his proposal. It's government-mandated price controls, they say.
Rep. ALLEN: The most profitable industry in the country is charging the highest prices in the world to people who can least afford it, and many of them are our seniors. And that is simply wrong.
WALLACE: Are you saying that the drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies of America, are gouging the seniors?
Rep. ALLEN: Yes, they are. (Footage of Allen and Wallace)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) And later on he told us...
Rep. ALLEN: What really bothers me about this industry is that they are, you know, spending millions of dollars to stop the kind of reform that America's seniors need. They're trying to stop this discount approach that I've advocated. They're trying to stop any prescription drug benefit under Medicare, as it's currently constituted. And, you know, the weight of that industry, the amount of financial resources that it's able to bring to bear, both in Washington and through television around the country, is formidable. (Excerpt from commercial) (Footage from commercial)
|
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Fact is the industry launched a $30 million advertising campaign attacking various proposals to expand Medicare to pay for seniors' drugs. (Excerpt from commercial)
WALLACE: We asked the top 10 US pharmaceutical manufacturers to respond to Congressman Allen's charges, but not one of them would answer our questions on camera. They referred us instead to their trade association. But they, too, declined an interview, unless it was live and unedited. (Footage of Alan Holmer)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) While they wouldn't talk to us, the trade association's president, Alan Holmer, had said in a previously taped and edited interview with the "CBS Evening News" that proposals like Representative Allen's will cripple research and development of new drugs.
Mr. ALAN HOLMER: The United States has an environment that nurtures biomedical research right now. If Congress changes that, it's gonna reduce pharmaceutical R&D, and it's gonna make it far less likely that the companies are gonna continue to be able to come out with the new cures and the new treatments to the extent that we have been able to do i--in the past dozen or so years.
WALLACE: We keep hearing that the pharmaceutical industry says, 'Hey, if government gets involved in this, this means price controls, and we don't want price controls.'
Mr. KOURPIAS: It's not about price controls. We want the industry to make profits. We're not against profits, but how many profits are they talking about?
WALLACE: You also hear that if the cost of these drugs to seniors goes down, it's gonna hurt research and development in new drugs, the very drugs that these old folks are going to need in the future.
Mr. KOURPIAS: Absolutely not.
WALLACE: Why?
Mr. KOURPIAS: It's not going to affect it again. Right now their profits are three times what they put into research and development. And billions of dollars are being spent at the National Institute of Health for the invention of new drugs. That helps that industry.
WALLACE: So when they cry poverty...
Mr. KOURPIAS: There's no truth to it.
Ms. SANFORD: I feel like a victim. And I also feel like a fugitive, that I have to leave the United States to go over the border and come to Canada to get over a $1,000 break on my insur--on my medication.
Ms. QUIRION: I've worked hard all my life. I never was on welfare. I never collected unemployment. I've worked till the age of--from the age of 15 till 67. And I get out of w--and I've never had to pay my insurance. When I worked, my employer paid the insurance. And it's the first time in my life, after retirement and all that hard work, that I cannot afford prescriptions.
WALLACE: Two years later seniors are still going to Canada to get their drugs cheaper. The group we went with makes a couple of trips a year. And while 26 states have taken steps to help the low-income elderly with their drug costs, still, there has been no legislation on the national level. But there has been endless talk about it in Washington.
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