[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 169 (Thursday, November 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H11857-H11858]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PRICE AND AFFORDABILITY OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  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, this week we will be taking up the 
prescription drug bill, and what I find interesting, a number of us on 
both sides of the aisle have worked on the issue of bringing the cost 
of medications down to a level that our grandparents and parents could 
get the medications they need at the prices they can afford.
  There are three ways to address the issue of price and affordability. 
One is through the issue of market mechanisms and free markets, 
allowing competition, people to buy their medications in Canada, Italy, 
France, Germany, having it brought into the United States at the prices 
where they are 40 to 50 percent cheaper and bringing that competition 
to bear on the price of medications. We have a closed market as it 
relates to pharmaceutical products. We are not allowed to have 
competition. Therefore, Americans pay the highest prices in the world. 
If we brought competition in, medications like Lipitor, Zocor, seeing 
what we see all over on our TV would be at the same prices that people 
in France, Germany, Canada, and England are paying at a 40 to 50 
percent discount of what we see in our corner grocery store.
  The second way we would bring prices down would be to allow the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Republican former Governor 
Tommy Thompson, to negotiate and create a Sam's Club out of Medicare. 
Like all the Sam's Clubs throughout the country, using the power of 41 
million seniors, we can negotiate lower prices and bring bulk and the 
purchasing power of our seniors down. That is what a Sam's Club does. 
That is what everybody does and the private insurance business does.
  This legislation prohibits the free market from operating, prohibits 
Sam's Clubs from being created under Medicare and also does a very weak 
job of allowing generics in the market to compete at a generic price 
versus a name-brand price.
  In these areas we could get competition, bring the prices down to an 
affordable level so our parents and grandparents could afford the 
medications they need whether that be blood thinner, cholesterol 
medication, medication for their heart. In each area, Members of the 
Republican Congress in this body and the other body chose to ignore the 
free market and chose to keep prices artificially high here in America.
  This is not only unfair to the seniors. What is worse, it is unfair 
to the taxpayers. I think we owe the common courtesy and decency to the 
taxpayers to get them the best price rather than the most expensive and 
premium price that they are paying today. If we are going to borrow 
$400 billion in the largest expansion of an entitlement in over

[[Page H11858]]

40 years, do my colleagues not think we owe the common courtesy and 
decency to the taxpayers to get them the best price, not the premium 
price?
  Today, Americans pay the most of any industrialized country for 
pharmaceutical products. Yet on each of the areas, market access and 
competition, bulk purchasing, or in generics, the conference took a 
punch. I understand why. I am not naive to politics. I understand who 
benefits.
  There was an article in The Washington Post showing that the 
pharmaceutical industry would garner $132 billion in additional revenue 
from this legislation, and who do my colleagues think is going to give 
that $132 billion? Our parents, grandparents, and the taxpayers. That 
is the way the system works, but in each of these cases we could have 
done something to lower prices and make the needed medications more 
affordable and more accessible, and we chose not to.
  That is why I am opposing this legislation. It does nothing to affect 
the price of prescription drugs that on average has gone up 15 to 20 
percent a year as the cause of inflation. Prescription drugs are one of 
the single reasons for the rise of inflation in health care in general. 
We could do something to affect the prices of medications and we chose 
not to.
  I think it is important to know, as somebody whose life was saved by 
types of medications, what the pharmaceutical industry does is very 
important. The research they do is very important. We Americans are the 
leaders in the world in new pharmaceutical research, and the reason is 
because the pharmaceutical industry here in the United States is the 
beneficiary of the generosity of the taxpayers. The research and 
development tax credit, all the research and development of new 
medications, life-saving medication is paid for by the taxpayers.

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