[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 116 (Tuesday, September 26, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S9255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I wish to speak on a subject in a happy 
vein.
  Yesterday, the President sent a letter to the Speaker and to our 
majority leader on the subject of prescription drugs. In that letter he 
said:

       I urge you to send me the Senate legislation to let 
     wholesalers and pharmacists bring affordable prescription 
     drugs to the neighborhoods where our seniors live.

  That proposal was passed by the Senate a couple of months ago as an 
amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture. 
It was sponsored by my colleague from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, and by 
Senator Dorgan of North Dakota on the other side of the aisle, others, 
and myself. It is one of two or three ways that I have determined to be 
appropriate to reduce the cost of prescription drugs--not just to some 
Americans, not just to seniors, not just to low-income seniors, but to 
all Americans--by ending, or at least arresting, the outrageous 
discrimination that is being practiced by American pharmaceutical 
manufacturing concerns that are benefiting from American research and 
development aspects, benefiting from the research paid for by the 
people of the United States through the National Institutes of Health, 
but still discriminating against American purchasers by charging them 
far more--sometimes more than twice as much--for prescription drugs 
than they do for the identical prescription drugs in Canada, in the 
United Kingdom, in Germany, New Mexico, and elsewhere around the world.
  The proposal by Senator Jeffords and others to which the President 
referred at least allows our pharmacies and drugstores to purchase 
these drugs in Canada or elsewhere when they can find identical 
prescription drugs at lower prices than the American manufacturers will 
sell them for to these American pharmacists, and to reimport them into 
the United States and pass those savings on to our American citizens.
  I don't often find myself in agreement with President Clinton, but I 
do in this case. I believe he is entirely right to urge the Speaker and 
the majority leader to include this proposal in the appropriations bill 
for the Department of Agriculture or, for that matter, any other bill 
going through the Senate and the House of Representatives, so that we 
can take this major step forward to slow down, at least, this 
unjustified discrimination in the cost of prescription drugs to all 
Americans.
  In this case, I join with the President in asking both the Speaker 
and our majority leader to use their best efforts, as I believe they 
are doing, to see to it that this overdue relief is in fact offered.

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