When Senator Kerry visited his chateau in France, he did more than snowboard. Apparently, he also bought some drugs.

The low prices he would have paid for pharmaceuticals he bought in France must have impressed him. Mr. Kerry placed the importation of European and Canadian drugs at the heart of his plan for lowering America’s health care costs.

But if Americans ever take Mr. Kerry up on his arrangement, they may not like what they get. Drugs sold in countries like France have their prices set by government so they are cheap, but they are also outdated. When it comes to deadly diseases that are treated with the most innovative but also most expensive drugs, the Europeans are not getting the best new medicines. And it has a lot to do with the efforts Europeans go through to get their prices so low.

The result is a treatment gap across the Atlantic that may be showing up in some of Europe’s health statistics. Europeans save money on their drugs, but when it comes to certain diseases, they are dying young. They get what they pay for.

The marketing of new drugs in Europe are closely tied to decisions on how to price them. European drug regulators don’t allow new medicines to reach patients until government negotiators have extracted a price they like from the drug companies.

Driving hard bargains often means drugs are available in America months, and sometimes years before they are available in Europe. In 2003, when 31 new drugs were launched worldwide, about 60% were available in America months before they were launched in Europe.

The delays hit people with the deadliest diseases hardest, since these are the conditions that cost the most to treat. Take cancer. Between 1995 and 2001 the 15 cancer drugs approved in both Europe and America took 468 days to reach patients in Europe versus 273 days in America.

In Europe, driving harder bargains also means forgoing more therapies. After all, it’s the capacity to shift or restrict treatments that reinforces a government’s negotiating power. When Europeans cannot get a price they like, or often even when they do, they also impose strict prerequisites on who can get access to new drugs.

In Germany, a recent study found that 41% of German physicians are treating early-stage breast cancer with taxanes compared to 60% in America. German breast cancer mortality decreased by 9% from 1990 to 1998, while in America mortality dropped more than twice as much, by 19%.

In Great Britain, a woman’s chance of surviving breast cancer is well below her odds in American or the rest of Europe, and restrictions on access to new medicines may be one reason. A study done in 2003 for Eng land’s National Health Service found that more than 1,000 eligible British women with breast cancer were still not receiving the breast cancer drug Herceptin long after its approval.

There are complex reasons for these health disparities, but the contribution of delayed access to the new and effective treatments cannot be ignored. In Europe, Herceptin got enmeshed in a 550-day approval process as the Europeans fought for a lower price on the medicine, while America approved it in fewer than 120 days. The launch of this lifesaving drug was needlessly delayed, and so is its appropriate adoption by doctors.

The impact of these pricing policies can be seen in other diseases besides cancer. In France, the National Hepatitis C Plan declared that at least 80% of infected patients should be treated by 2002, but less than a quarter of the 200,000 eligible patients have received care.

Fewer than 50% of the 30,000 French multiple sclerosis patients eligible for treatment with beta interferons actually receive it. And although safer atypical antipsychotic drugs are now recognized as first line treatments and account for 60% of all prescriptions for schizophrenia in America, in Italy only 40% of eligible patients receive the medicines, in Spain 20%, and in Germany only 10%.

It is a bitter truth that Americans pay more for their drugs than Europeans, but seniors here also get early access to the best new medicines.

Americans seniors won’t be able to choose to import only their less urgent medicines, either. Since the cost of developing one new medicine is defrayed over the profits from many drugs before it, price capping one medicine will invariable limit access to another.

Seniors are not importing a single medicine but an entire system for pricing pharmaceuticals. If they are intent on buying drugs from Europe they should also resign themselves to importing Europe’s delays and complacency with outdated medicines. Because in medicine, like everything else, you get what you pay for.

Dr. Gottlieb is a physician and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Until October, he was senior adviser to the head of the Medicare and Medicaid Program, Dr. Mark McClellan. Previously, Dr. Gottlieb was director of medical policy development at the Food and Drug Administration.