[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 108 (Monday, July 21, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H7200-H7201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HOUSE REPUBLICAN PRESCRIPTION DRUG PLAN: A BITTER PILL FOR AMERICA'S 
                                SENIORS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, this week the House will take a historic 
vote, probably very late toward the end of the week, late in the 
evening, giving the pharmaceutical industry the maximum amount of time 
to beat back a provision of law that would lower the price of 
prescription drugs for every American, not just those on Medicare, but 
every American.
  Let us use a couple of examples here. This is a simple vote. It would 
allow Americans to reimport, without limit, American-manufactured, FDA-
certified, safe drugs from Canada back into the United States. The 
interesting thing about these drugs is they are manufactured in the 
United States of America; but when they take a vacation to Canada, 
their price drops dramatically because the Government of Canada, unlike 
the Government of the United States, with the exception of the Veterans 
Department and some other agencies at the Pentagon, negotiates with the 
pharmaceutical industry and negotiates lower prices. They use market 
forces to benefit the people of Canada.
  The Republicans here in the House, bizarrely enough, are offering a 
$400 billion prescription drug benefit for seniors that is based on 
subsidies to the private insurance industry and supporting the 
outrageous list price for drugs, which no one pays except the 
uninsured; but they would mandate that that be done. They would outlaw 
the United States Government from negotiating lower prices, unlike the 
Government of Canada, the Government of Great Britain, the governments 
of all the EU, virtually every other government in the world. In almost 
every country in the world a person can buy U.S.-manufactured, FDA-
certified drugs for a substantial discount below the price those drugs 
are made available here.

[[Page H7201]]

  In the case of one drug for glaucoma, Xalatan, the cost in the U.S. 
is $631 a year. If we buy it in Canada, it is $429 a year. If the 
government negotiated, as the VA does, we can get it for $336 a year; 
but under the brilliant Republican plan here in the House, a drug that 
costs $631 a year will cost a senior $746. They will pay actually more 
than the drug costs today list price. This is the grand new benefit 
that they are going to deliver at a cost of $400 billion.
   We could lower the price of drugs more substantially for every 
American, particularly those on Medicare, by simply voting for and 
allowing the safe reimportation of U.S.-manufactured, FDA-certified 
drugs from Canada, plain and simple.
  We are going to hear a whole host of reasons why that is a bad idea. 
It will hurt their profits. Yes, it will hurt their profits. They say, 
well, if our profits go down, we will not do the research. That is a 
lie. The pharmaceutical industry makes its money on new drugs. They get 
an exclusive 17-year patent for those drugs. That is their profit 
center. The last thing that is going to go is the research because that 
is where they are going to make their money. Maybe they will cut the 
obscene salaries of their CEOs. Maybe they can be get by on two, three 
million a year instead of sixty.
   Maybe they will cut the billions they are spending to direct promote 
their drugs on television, something that was outlawed by the FCC and 
the FDA until quite recently and something that is very problematic, to 
get people induced to go out and by a particular drug, to go into their 
doctor who is pushed for time and say I want that purple pill, I saw it 
on television. Well, that is not what you need. I want the purple pill. 
Okay, I have only got 10 minutes, you are out of here, you have got the 
prescription. Doctors tell me they do that. So if they saved those 
billions, they cut the salaries and some of their other overhead and 
administrative costs, they would still have plenty of money to do the 
research, and they could still earn a good profit; but Americans would 
pay 40 or 50 percent less for their drugs.
  They say this legislation will kill people. They claim somehow the 
drugs that took a vacation to Canada have become unsafe while they were 
there. They say this will kill people. I will tell my colleagues what 
is killing people in the United States of America today: the fact that 
they cannot afford life-saving drugs. There are seniors in my district 
who divide their drugs in half. There are seniors in my district, 
couples, who decide which one is going to get the critical drugs this 
month because they cannot afford to buy all of them because they do not 
have a benefit. That is killing people.
   Bringing back U.S.-manufactured, FDA-certified drugs from Canada is 
not going to kill people. It will kill obscene profits on the part of 
this industry because they are gouging America's seniors. America's 
seniors are paying twice as much as people in Canada for many drugs and 
even more if we go across the border to Mexico.
   So this is going to be a simple vote, but it is going to be a vote 
on which millions of dollars are unleashed to send false messages to 
try and pressure Members of Congress to vote against the interests of 
all Americans who would be healthier and benefit from less expensive 
drugs. We could do this through the miracle of market forces and, yes, 
even free trade.
  I voted against the NAFTA agreement. I think it stinks and it is 
killing jobs in this country; but guess what, probably prohibiting the 
reimportation of drugs is NAFTA illegal, but no one ever files a 
complaint when these NAFTA illegal things benefit the big corporations, 
only when they benefit people, and this Congress is going to try and 
stop changes in that situation.

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