[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 15, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H606]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DRUG PRICES IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about an issue 
that is not new to this Congress and certainly is not new to the 
American people, and that is the price that Americans pay for 
prescription drugs relative to the rest of the industrialized world.
  I started this pilgrimage about 5 or 6 years ago. Many Members do not 
know how I got involved in this, but the issue that got me involved was 
the price of pigs. Because about 5\1/2\ years ago, the price of live 
hogs in the United States collapsed. It dropped from about $37 per 
hundred-weight down to about $7 per hundred-weight. So these farmers 
started to call me and say, Can't you do something about this, 
Congressman? And I said, Well, I don't know what we can do. They said, 
At least can you stop all these Canadian pigs from coming across our 
border making our market even more difficult?
  So I did what any good Congressman would do, I called the Secretary 
of Agriculture, I called the Secretary of Commerce, and essentially I 
got the same answer. And the answer was: Well, that's called NAFTA. 
That's called free trade. We have open borders. I said, You mean we 
have open borders when it comes to pork bellies but not open borders 
when it comes to Prilosec? And the Secretary of Commerce literally said 
to me, Well, I guess that's right. I said, Well, that doesn't sound 
right to me.
  So I got some charts and started comparing what Americans pay for 
drugs compared to Canada and Europe, and I started bringing these 
charts down to the floor of the House and talking about those 
differences and saying essentially that if we are going to have open 
markets that our farmers have to compete with, then the big 
pharmaceutical companies ought to have to compete as well.
  Last year, I had a chart from Germany, and we have some relationships 
now with some of the pharmacies around the world, and they give us 
regular prices in terms of what they are charging for the drugs. Last 
year, the difference between Germany and the United States, depending 
on how you look at it, about a 40 percent difference.
  Over the last year, the price of the American dollar has declined by 
over 20 percent relative to the Euro. So when we got these charts, I 
was afraid the differences would have all but evaporated. Lo and 
behold, the prices are even more exaggerated today than they were a 
year ago. In other words, prices here in the United States, the 
differential is even greater today than it was a year ago, even though 
the value of the dollar has declined by 20 percent.
  Let me give a couple of examples of drugs people might recognize. One 
is the drug Nexium, the new purple pill. At the local pharmacy in 
Rochester, Minnesota, a 30-day supply of Nexium, 20 milligrams, is 
$145. You can buy that same package of Nexium at the Metropolitan 
Pharmacy in Frankfurt, Germany for $60.25.
  Norvasc, 30 tablets, $54.83 in the United States, $19.31 over in 
Germany.
  But here is one that really got our attention: Zocor. In the United 
States, $85.39; in Germany, $23.83. What is interesting there is we 
negotiate and get good deals for Federal employees. The Federal copay 
right now for Zocor is $30. In other words, you can buy it walking in 
off the street with a prescription in Frankfurt, Germany, cheaper than 
you can the copay for Federal employees.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to serve notice tonight that this issue is 
not going to go away, I am not going to go away, and the people of not 
only my State but people all over the country are only demanding we get 
fair prices. We as Americans subsidize the pharmaceutical industry in 
three separate ways. First of all, we pay for a big share of the 
research. This year we will spend about 27 billion taxpayer dollars to 
fund basic research and research in drugs and chemicals and so forth to 
determine what might work. And many of those things are given to the 
pharmaceutical industry, essentially, and then they patent those drugs. 
So we do subsidize a big part of their research.
  Second, we subsidize them through the Tax Code. Literally, they write 
off all the costs they have for research. In fact, in some cases they 
get tax credits, research and development tax credits.
  Finally, we subsidize them through the prices we pay.
  Now, I believe in patents, and I do not believe anybody should be 
stealing other people's patents. And I do not believe that we as 
Americans should escape paying our fair share for the cost of these 
drugs. I think it is fair we pay our fair share. I think we should 
subsidize the people in sub-Saharan Africa, for example. But I do not 
think Americans should be forced to continue to subsidize the starving 
Swiss and the starving Germans and the people in the industrialized 
world.
  It is time Americans have access to world-class drugs at world market 
prices. I hope my colleagues will go to my Web site at gil.house.gov. 
We have a site there with great charts and a lot of information. If 
people will just study this, be objective, I think they will come to 
the same conclusion, that it is time to open up markets for the 
pharmaceutical companies the way our farmers have to compete in a world 
marketplace.

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