[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 83 (Thursday, June 20, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H3754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFITS AND COSTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kennedy of Minnesota). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address the House tonight on 
the question of prescription drug benefits and prescription drug costs 
for our seniors. I have worked very closely on this issue, and while 
the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Energy and 
Commerce are busy marking up prescription drug benefits for our 
seniors, which incidentally would include a no-cost benefit to people 
under a certain income bracket, there are other things that we should 
be doing to help lower the cost of prescription drugs.
  So I applaud the committee for their work on it, but with the number 
in mind of $1.8 trillion, which is what the Congressional Budget Office 
estimates seniors will be paying for prescription drugs over the next 
10 years, we realize the size of the task in front of us, so we cannot 
just say, let us do a prescription drug benefit and be done with it. 
There are other things we should do.
  One of the things, Mr. Speaker, we should allow is drug 
reimportation. Drug reimportation is very important, because while we 
can buy clothes, food, cars, and, in fact, we can buy practically 
anything from our neighbor north of the border from us in Canada, the 
FDA does not allow American citizens to buy their drugs over there. 
Even though they are FDA-approved, the same dosage, the same bottle, 
the same brand, the same prescription, we cannot drive from Detroit 
over to Windsor and buy our drugs, according to the FDA.
  Now, that is too bad, because there are a lot of seniors who already 
are doing this and saving thousands of dollars a year, which is an 
important and significant savings for anybody, but particularly for 
people on a fixed income.
  I have a constituent who actually is buying Lipitor from another 
country. The prescription of Lipitor in Texas is about $90, but if she 
buys it over the border, it is $29. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Gutknecht) has submitted for the Record time and time again a list of 
the costs of drugs for America versus Europe and America versus Canada. 
We need to allow seniors to buy their drugs from any country they want 
if they are FDA-approved drugs, and we should let their pharmacists do 
it locally, on a wholesale basis.
  The second thing we should do, Mr. Speaker, is look at the patent 
issue. Drugs right now get a 17-year patent. I ask Members, is that 
long enough, or is that too short?
  One of my concerns is we pay for a lot of the basic research as 
American taxpayers. We pay to the National Institutes of Health and 
other government research agencies, and then we allow the 
pharmaceutical companies to get a big research and development write-
off on their taxes, so we do subsidize drug research.
  That being the case, should we allow a 17-year patent on drugs? When 
the patent on Prozac went off last August, the price of Prozac fell 70 
percent. We have to ask ourselves, this government-sanctioned monopoly, 
is this a good idea? I bring up the question, Mr. Speaker. I do not 
know the answer to it, but I think we should look at it.
  Thirdly, we should look at drug approval time. The FDA right now 
takes 3 to 8 years to approve a new drug. We need to narrow that 
window. We need to put safety first, but if we can get the drug to 
market faster in a safe way, we need to do it.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, there is a study from the University of 
Minnesota, which the gentleman may be familiar with, which actually 
says as much as 40 percent of the prescription drugs that are taken are 
either unnecessary or are taken incorrectly. We need to help people 
take the prescription drugs in a safe and in a correct manner, because 
the cost, if we can imagine 40 percent of the drugs being used 
incorrectly, that is a tremendous amount of savings and a huge health 
hazard.
  So these are some of the things we should continue to do along with 
the prescription drug benefit, which the Republican Party is offering 
next week on the House floor.
  I want to say these things, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the time and 
the work the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) has put into this 
himself, and look forward to following this process down. As my mother 
would say to me, it is the cost, stupid. Bring down the cost of my 
prescription drugs. We need to do it now.

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