[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13823-13824]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE HIGH COST OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  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 once again to talk about the high 
cost of prescription drugs, more importantly, the price that Americans 
pay versus what people in most of the rest of the industrialized world 
pay for exactly the same drugs.
  This particular chart is one that I have used many times here on the 
House floor and at town hall meetings back in my district. They are 
beginning to get dated and a little bit frayed, but I want to talk 
about some of the prices that Americans pay, and what we have listed 
here is roughly about a dozen of the most commonly prescribed drugs.
  One that we have learned an awful lot about last fall when we had the 
anthrax scare here in Washington, and unfortunately four of our postal 
workers lost their lives to anthrax, we learned a lot about Cipro. 
Cipro is a drug made by a German drug manufacturer called Bayer. We in 
the United States know it as a company that became famous making 
aspirin, Bayer Aspirin; but it is a German company, and they make a lot 
of other pharmaceuticals. But I wanted to point out to my colleagues 
what we pay for a 30-day supply on average for Cipro is about $88. It 
is $87.99 to be exact. That same drug in Europe sells for an average of 
about $40.75, less than half the price for exactly the same drug.
  I will say that Tommy Thompson, our Secretary of Health and Human 
Services, did a good job; he negotiated a very good price on the 
millions of capsules that we bought at the time that we were concerned 
about anthrax, and we still are concerned about anthrax, and he got a 
much better price

[[Page 13824]]

than that, but this is what the average consumer would pay. A drug like 
Claritin, which is a very commonly prescribed drug this time of year 
for allergies that people have, in the United States the average price 
is $89. That same drug on average sells in Europe for $18.75. A drug 
that my father uses, my 84-year-old, soon to be 85-year-old, father 
takes a drug called Coumadin. Many seniors take Coumadin. It is a blood 
thinner and one of the most commonly prescribed drugs. A 30-day supply 
if you have to go down to your local pharmacy and pay for it yourself 
sells for about $64.88. That exact same drug made in the same plant 
under the same FDA approval sells in Europe for about $15.80. And so 
the list goes.
  I am not here tonight to beat up on the pharmaceutical industry. It 
is really not so much shame on them, because they are only doing what 
any free market company would do and, that is, to exploit a market 
opportunity that they have.

                              {time}  2115

  So it is not shame on them. They have done a great job of developing 
many drugs that not only save lives but improve the quality of lives 
not only for Americans but for people around the world. The problem is 
that the way we have set this system up, because we do not require 
competition, we have created a monster and the monster is that we are 
paying literally all of the costs for the research for the rest of the 
world.
  More importantly, there are estimates that at least 60 percent of the 
drug companies' profits come at the expense of American consumers.
  I happen to believe that Americans ought to pay their fair share for 
prescription drugs. We are a very wealthy country. God has blessed this 
country. We are the most productive country in the world, and therefore 
we probably should pay more than the developing countries in Europe, 
but I do not think that American consumers should have to subsidize the 
starving Swiss. Let me say too, Mr. Speaker, these are not my prices. I 
did not make up this chart. These are from a group called the Life 
Extension Foundation which for more than a decade has been studying the 
differences between what Americans pay for prescription drugs and what 
the rest of the world pays. I also want to point out a chart, because 
what we are seeing is an incredible inflation rate in the cost of 
prescription drugs, and what you see here from the latest estimates we 
have for 2001, prescription drugs went up in the United States about 19 
percent. The average Social Security cost-of-living adjustment was a 
little less than 3\1/2\ percent. One does not have to have a degree in 
statistics to realize that this is unsustainable. We cannot live with 
this system. So some of us have come together and tried to put together 
a program that we think will work, and what we are going to be 
introducing is a bill here in the next several days that will make it 
very clear that Americans do have access to these drugs at world market 
prices and it is a simple bill that simply says if it is an FDA-
approved drug made in an FDA-approved facility that both consumers and 
their pharmacists can import those drugs or reimport those drugs into 
American markets.
  And how much can we save? Let me give you an idea. We estimate that 
you can save at least 35 percent on the drugs coming in, the same drugs 
made in the same FDA-approved facilities as opposed to what you will 
pay for them here in the United States. And to put a pencil to that, 
our own accounting experts, the people at the Congressional Budget 
Office, estimate that seniors alone over the next 10 years will spend 
over $2 trillion on prescription drugs. Two trillion dollars times 35 
percent is $700 billion that we can save.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this very important 
legislation which will give Americans access to world market drugs at 
world market prices.

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