Media mogul turned New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday he favors buying prescription drugs from outside the United States to save money for the city's hospitals and health department.

The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which buys drugs for New York's jails, and its Health and Hospitals Corp., operator of 11 hospitals and more than 100 other facilities, are working on ways to buy medicine from abroad, Bloomberg said.

''It's a great idea to use our combined economic power to get a better deal for our citizens,'' said Bloomberg, a prominent Republican who was once a Democrat. ''It's exactly what we should be doing.'' He didn't give details of how such a plan would be implemented.

The mayor's comments at an unrelated news conference in Manhattan followed moves by officials elsewhere, such as Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and Mayor Michael Albano of Springfield, Mass., to buy drugs at cheaper prices from Canada for public employees. Brand-name drugs cost 69 percent more in the United States than Canada in a 2001 survey by Canada's drug-price regulators, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.

The purchase of prescription medicine from abroad is prohibited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which says it can't guarantee safety in imported drugs.

Jeffrey Trewhitt, spokesman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group, said drug importation heightens the risk that patients will receive counterfeit drugs. More buying abroad would make it harder for U.S. companies to invest in research and development on new medicines, he said.

''In 2000, the Canadian pharmaceutical industry spent about $600 million while the U.S. industry spent $20 billion, and one of the major reasons is because it has competitive market pricing,'' Trewhitt said.

Albano said last month he would continue to order prescription drugs from Canada for 1,600 city employees, practice he said saves his city $9 million a year.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a Democratic candidate for president, said in a statement that he supports importing Canadian drugs. Last week, Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said they are looking into whether their states should buy employees' prescription drugs from Canada.

Unlike other plans that focus on public employees, Bloomberg proposed buying drugs from abroad for patients in city hospitals and clinics, which currently cost $123 million a year, according to Kate McGrath, spokeswoman for the Health and Hospitals Corp.

The quasi-public hospitals corporation, run by a board of directors appointed by the mayor, operates 11 acute care hospitals, six diagnostic and treatment centers, four long-term care facilities and more than 100 community clinics.

The city's health department also spends several million dollars a year for use in city jails, McGrath said. Media representatives for the department weren't available.

Bloomberg said he first proposed buying prescription drugs from abroad during his 2001 mayoral campaign. ''It's still on the to-do list,'' he said.

Bloomberg is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.