[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2464 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







106th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 2464

    To amend the Robinson-Patman Anti-discrimination Act to protect 
       American consumers from foreign drug price discrimination.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             April 26, 2000

  Mr. Gorton introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
               referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
    To amend the Robinson-Patman Anti-discrimination 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) recognizing that the development of new drugs is 
        important because the use of such drugs enables people to live 
        longer and lead healthier, more productive lives, the United 
        States has made a strong commitment to supporting the research 
        and development of new drugs through taxpayer-supported funding 
        of the National Institutes of Health, through the Research and 
        Development tax credit and through other means;
            (5) forty-five percent of the new drugs developed in the 
        last 25 years were developed in the United States;
            (6) other countries should pay a fair share of the cost of 
        research and development of new drugs that benefit everyone, 
        not just Americans; and
            (7) since 1936, the Robinson-Patman 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 different 
        countries.

SEC. 3. AMENDMENT TO THE ROBINSON-PATMAN ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ACT.

    (a) Prescription Drug Pricing.--Section 2 of the Clayton Act (as 
amended by the Robinson-Patman Anti-discrimination 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 entity, including 
        any affiliate of that entity, 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));
                    ``(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 6 months after the 
date of enactment of this section.
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