[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 147 (Monday, October 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H9709-H9710]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          PURCHASING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FROM CANADA AND EUROPE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, people from around the world come to 
America for their medical care. Yet Americans are forced to travel 
around the world for their prescription drugs and medications. Today, 
in the Washington Post, there was a poll conducted by the Washington 
Post and ABC News showing more than two-thirds of Americans think it 
should be legal to purchase medications from Canada and Europe and 
other industrialized nations.
  I think this is significant given on the eve that the conference on 
prescription drugs is meeting to know where the American people are on 
the major issue of allowing them to purchase medications from either 
Europe or Canada, allowing competition to pervade in the prescription 
drug area, allowing choice to consumers. Two-thirds of the Americans 
think it is the right thing to do.
  In the meantime, millions of Americans are forced to either cut their 
medications in half, skip a month, forgo their prescription drugs 
entirely, or cut their pills, as I said, in half. Yet of those who 
choose not to do that, many are forced to go to Canada to buy their 
medications.
  And what do our drug companies provide these seniors who are in dire 
need of life saving medications? Today, Eli Lilly announced joining 
other major companies like Glaxo, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer, they are 
going to begin to limit their sales to Canada, cut off their supplies 
to Canada. Rather than allowing competition and choice to exist in the 
system, these prescription drug companies are going to deny access to 
the Canadians where Americans get competitive prices.
  You take the cancer drug Tamoxifen, $360 in the United States; 
Canada, $33. Life-saving medication for women with breast cancer. You 
go down the list, line by line. Last week, USA Today ran an article 
going line by line over major medications, and they were all somewhere 
between 40 to 50 percent cheaper in Canada than they are in the United 
States.
  And the irony of all of that is many of those medications were 
developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars. So what have we provided? Not 
only do we fund the research and development of these new life-saving 
medications, we are provided the unique opportunity of paying the most 
expensive prices in the world for medications that were originally 
developed with U.S. tax dollars.
  Many in the industry not only now are limiting sales, they argue 
about the safety of these medications purchased from Canada. Yet today, 
we import $15 billion worth of medications from around the world. 
Nobody argues about their safety. And the most telling example about 
the issue of Canada is that in October 2000 when the United States 
Government needed a vaccine for anthrax, where did they turn because 
there was a shortage here in the United States?

                              {time}  1945

  They turned to Canada. If it was so unsafe for our consumers to go to 
Canada to buy medications, where did the United States Government go in 
dire need? They went to Canada because the system in Canada is 
comparable to our system.
  A recent Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive poll shows 77 percent 
of Americans believe it is unreasonable for pharmaceutical companies to 
take actions like Eli Lilly did today.
  The facts are that the claims made by the FDA and the pharmaceutical 
companies about the dangers of these

[[Page H9710]]

drugs simply do not hold. They did not hold when the United States 
Government needed them, and they do not hold today when our seniors and 
others are forced to go to Canada to get life-saving medications.
  This system is not some great beyond that we do not know. Today in 
Europe the system of parallel trading exists, free trade where people 
in Germany or France or England or Ireland buy medications wherever 
they need them in Europe. That system exists, and it is the most 
competitive market in the pharmaceutical industry.
  What I am suggesting, what others in bipartisan fashion have passed 
in July, the legislation known as market access, are suggesting is 
allow the United States to participate in that market access. Allow the 
barriers to come down, allow the market to organize and properly manage 
itself and prices in the United States would come down, rather than 
allowing a 40 to 50 percent disparity between the prices in Canada and 
Europe between the United States. That is what would happen if we 
passed this legislation today.
  For too long, if we take a look at it, in Families USA, the 50 most 
commonly used drugs by our seniors have risen 3\1/2\ times the rate of 
inflation. Between 2000 and 2003, seniors' expenditures on prescription 
drugs increased by 44 percent.
  The costs of medications are too expensive. Eli Lilly and the other 
pharmaceuticals are limiting the sales to Canada in an attempt to cut 
off the seniors. And what does the United States Congress do and what 
does the United States Senate do? When they passed a prescription drug, 
when it came to the issue of price and affordability, the Congress did 
nothing. And so people are forced to take action in their own hands and 
go to Canada.
  We should not turn our grandmothers and our grandfathers into drug 
runners, filling up prescription bags for people that live in the 
housing centers with them. We can deal with the issue of cost. Allow 
the free market system to work and allow choice to exist and prices 
would come down here in the United States.
  For too long the American people have been forced to subsidize the 
starving French and Germans. We should give them competitive prices, 
give them choice, allow the free market to work; and we will finally 
get the prescription drugs people need and deserve.

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