[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 82 (Monday, June 20, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4784-H4785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           THE HIGH COST OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FOR AMERICANS

  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, once again I rise to talk about an issue 
that altogether too many Americans know more about than perhaps some 
folks here in Washington, and that is the almost inexcusable high 
prices for prescription drugs here in the United States. The more we 
learn about this subject, the more frustrating it becomes, because what 
we have learned over the last 5 or 6 years is it is not just that 
Americans pay high prices for prescription drugs; it is that people in 
industrialized countries like Germany and France and Switzerland pay so 
much less than we do.
  What I have here is a chart, and I know these letters are almost too 
small to see on the television cameras, but let me point out a couple 
of the numbers. This is a chart of comparative prices that we got from 
a pharmacy in Frankfurt, Germany, called Metropolitan Pharmacy; and 
then we got prices from a local pharmacy in Rochester, Minnesota, for 
exactly the same drugs made in the same plants under the same FDA 
approval. What we see are some amazing differences.
  Look at, for example, the drug Nexium, 30 tablets, 20 milligrams. In 
Germany, you can walk in with a prescription and buy that drug at the 
Metropolitan Pharmacy for $60.25. That exact same drug in Rochester, 
Minnesota, will cost you $145.33.
  Let me just say that prices do vary from pharmacy to pharmacy; but I 
would guarantee that here in Washington, D.C., the price would probably 
be at least $145.33.
  Let us take the drug Zocor, 30 tablets, 10 milligrams. In Germany you 
can buy that drug for $23.83, but here in the United States you would 
have to pay $85.39.
  Now, that is bad enough. But if you total all of these up, these are 
10 of the more commonly prescribed drugs in the United States and 
Germany, the total for those drugs for a month's supply in Frankfurt, 
Germany, $455.57. Those same drugs here in the United States, $1,040.4. 
That is a 128 percent difference.
  Now, this chart actually gets more interesting, because we have 
pharmacists all over the world now who send us their prices on a 
regular basis so we can compare what is happening to drug prices. One 
year ago, when we compared a basket, now the drugs changed slightly, 
because some of these drugs went off patent, and so the basket of drugs 
changed slightly, but 1 year ago, the difference between the basket of 
10 of the most commonly prescribed drugs in Germany was $430, and here 
in the United States it was $866. It was exactly a 100 percent 
difference.
  The point I want to make here is during that period, during that 1-
year time period, what happened was the value of the dollar relative to 
the euro actually came down.
  Now, I am not a monetarist, I do not quite understand these exchanges 
sometimes, but the people who do tell me that actually what should have 
happened is the price differential between the United States and 
Germany should have gotten less. It actually got worse.
  People ask, well, how could that happen? How could it be that the 
difference between what Americans pay and Germans pay actually got 
worse? Well, the reason is Americans are held hostage. The American 
market is a captive market, because not only do we give the 
pharmaceutical companies, which I believe we should give them the 
rights that they have in terms of their patent rights and so forth, I 
do not think that we should do anything to hurt people's patent rights; 
but what we have done in the United States is different than just 
giving them patent rights. Intellectual property deserves patent 
protection.
  For example, we know that when Intel comes out with a new computer 
chip, that first chip off the line can cost $500 million, but we do not 
tell Intel that you can also control that product after you make the 
first sale. In other words, if they sell that chip to a distributor in 
Japan for $25 and they want to sell it to American manufacturers for 
$75, they cannot control what that distributor in Japan does. We have 
open markets.
  That is what we want to create here in the Congress. We have a 
majority of the House and a majority of the Senate who believe that it 
is time to stop holding Americans captive. We understand that these 
drugs cost a lot of money to develop.
  We as Americans are willing to pay our share in terms of developing 
those drugs; but, unfortunately, Americans pay in three different ways 
for these drugs. First of all, we pay in the prices, and they are 
inflated. They are the highest prices in the world for these drugs. 
Secondly, we pay, in some respects, through our Tax Code, because when 
companies develop these drugs here in the United States, they get to 
write off all of the cost of those research and development dollars.
  But, third, and this is also important, Americans pay more than any 
other country through our tax dollars to help develop these drugs. This 
year, we will spend over $20 billion through various

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agencies, the National Science Foundation, the various groups at NIH, 
and even through the Defense Department, to help develop these miracle 
drugs.
  So in some respects, we pay for them in the prices we pay, we pay in 
the Tax Code, and we pay in the research that we pay for.
  It is time to give Americans access to world-class drugs at world-
market prices.

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