[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13966]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     OUTRAGEOUSLY HIGH DRUG PRICES

  (Mr. GUTKNECHT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an issue that 
every senior citizen knows about and, frankly, if we have had town hall 
meetings, we know about it as well, and that is outrageously high drug 
prices. My 82-year-old father, for example, takes a drug called 
Coumadin. It is a blood thinner. In the United States, the average 
price for that drug is $30.25, but the Europeans for the same drug made 
in the same plant under the same FDA approval pay only $2.85.
  Mr. Speaker, in the information age, we can no longer keep this 
secret. Americans are paying double, triple and sometimes quadruple the 
prices that people around the rest of the world are paying for the same 
drugs, and it would be easy for us to say shame on the pharmaceutical 
companies. But the truth of the matter is this administration has had 8 
years and what have they done about this? Well, they have sent 
thousands of threatening letters to senior citizens when they tried to 
import legal drugs into the United States.
  Shame on the FDA. Shame on our Justice Department and shame on us. It 
is time for this Congress to take action to make certain that American 
senior citizens have access to world market prices for prescription 
drugs that they need. No senior should have to choose between getting 
the food they need and the drugs that they need as well.

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