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We’d like to share some exciting news from Maine. Last week the state’s legislature passed a bill to allow mail-order importation from international pharmacies. The bill, “An Act To Facilitate the Licensing of International Mail Order Prescription Pharmacies by the Maine Board of Pharmacy” (LD 171), negates a September 2012 ruling by Maine Attorney General William Schneider that prohibited non-U.S. pharmacies from selling to Maine customers.

We’ve gotten word that an old scam is rearing its ugly head again. For a number of years, scammers have been targeting people who purchase prescription drugs online. We wanted to warn our readers again about this fraudulent activity.

The issue of drug affordability is not going away. If anything, we are seeing further evidence that this public health crisis is getting worse.

Overall drug spending in the U.S. went down last year, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. In stark contrast, specialty drug spending went up 18 percent in 2012, according to Express Scripts.

There are plenty of statistics out there related to prescription drug prices and spending. One measure that has us particularly concerned is medication nonadherence. That is, when people simply stop taking their medication. When people don't take their meds as prescribed, we know that it compounds their health problems. It results in additional trips to the emergency room, which adds to overall health care costs.

We've heard many stories of Americans having to choose between buying medicine and other essentials, such as groceries. We know that cost is a huge factor in nonadherence. And this problem is growing. A new study shows that 50 million Americans (age 19-64) didn't fill a prescription in 2012 due to cost. This number is up 2 million from the previous year. And the nonadherence number would clearly be much higher if older adults had been included in the study.