[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 4869 Introduced in House (IH)]







106th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 4869

  To amend the Clayton Act to protect American consumers from foreign 
                       drug price discrimination.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             July 18, 2000

 Mrs. Chenoweth-Hage introduced the following bill; which was referred 
                   to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To amend the Clayton Act to protect American consumers from foreign 
                       drug price discrimination.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Prescription Drug Fairness Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds that--
            (1) It is difficult for some Americans, particularly senior 
        citizens, to afford the prescription drugs they need to stay 
        healthy;
            (2) many American seniors cross the border to Canada or 
        Mexico to buy prescription drugs developed, manufactured, and 
        approved in the United States at lower prices than the same 
        drugs are available for in the United States;
            (3) according to the General Accounting Office, American 
        consumers pay on average 43 percent more for prescription drugs 
        than Canadian consumers;
            (4) forty-five percent of the new drugs developed in the 
        last 25 years were developed in the United States;
            (5) other countries should pay a fair share of the cost of 
        research and development of new drugs that benefit everyone, 
        not just Americans; and
            (6) since 1936 the Clayton Act, as amended by the Act 
        commonly known as the Robinson-Patman Antidiscrimination Act, 
        has prohibited price discrimination among like buyers in the 
        United States, and has established as a legal norm the concept 
        of fair dealing in pricing. These same principles of fair 
        dealing should be applied to prescription drug sales to 
        wholesalers in foreign countries.

SEC. 3. AMENDMENT TO THE CLAYTON ACT.

    (a) Prescription Drug Pricing.--Section 2 of the Clayton Act (15 
U.S.C. 13)) is amended by adding at the end the following:
    ``(g)(1) For purposes of enforcing subsection (a), the sale of a 
prescription drug by a manufacturer outside the United States shall be 
deemed to be the sale of that prescription drug within the United 
States, and discrimination in price between wholesalers within the 
United States, and wholesalers outside the United States shall be 
deemed substantially to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with 
any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such 
discrimination, or with customers of either of them.
    ``(2) In this subsection:
            ``(A) The term `manufacturer' means any person, including 
        any affiliate of that person, that is engaged in--
                    ``(i) the production, preparation, propagation, 
                compounding, conversion, or processing of prescription 
                drugs, either directly or indirectly by extraction from 
                substances of natural origin, or independently by means 
                of chemical synthesis, or by a combination of 
                extraction and chemical synthesis; or
                    ``(ii) in the packaging, repackaging, labeling, 
                relabeling, or distribution of prescription drugs.
            ``(B) The term `prescription drug' means a drug--
                    ``(i) that is described in section 503(b)(1) of the 
                Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 353 
                (b)(1)); and
                    ``(ii) for which an application has been approved 
                under section 505 of the Federal Food, Drug, and 
                Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355), or as applicable, under 
                section 351 of the Public Health Service Act (942 
                U.S.C. 262).''.
    (b) Effective Date.--This Act shall take effect 180 days after the 
date of enactment of this section.
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