[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 22159]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       DRUG IMPORT PROVISIONS OF AGRICULTURE APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  (Mr. BROWN of Ohio asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, sometimes I wonder whether the 
Republican leadership of this Congress reports to the public or to the 
prescription drug industry. The public sends a clear message that they 
are sick of unjustifiably high and blatantly discriminatory 
prescription drug prices.
  Seniors are particularly vulnerable to overwhelming prescription drug 
expenses. Democrats offer a proposal featuring an optional Medicare 
drug benefit, drug prices discounted to reflect a collective bargaining 
power of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries, and a strategy for 
undercutting international price discrimination, the ability to 
reimport prescription drugs.
  Republicans refuse to even consider price discounts for seniors, they 
emasculate the reimportation proposal, and then they sunset those weak 
provisions before they even have a chance to kick in.
  A phony watered-down drug reimportation bill is marginally better 
than no bill at all, but I do not want a single American to be fooled 
into thinking that Republican leadership has been responsive to the 
prescription drug crisis. The only constituency they have been 
responsive to is the prescription drug industry.

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