[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11255]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                DRUG INDUSTRY NEEDS TO CLEAN UP ITS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kerns). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, earlier today I heard a Republican 
member of the Committee on Ways and Means absolutely distort the truth 
about the Democrats' prescription drug plan, saying that it requires 
that seniors go into the Democrats' plan whether or not they choose to, 
whether or not they already have drug coverage. There is no place in 
this debate for those kinds of fabrications and those kind of lies, and 
I just want to set the record straight.
  Mr. Chairman, the prescription drug industry needs to clean up its 
act. You know it. I know it. American consumers know it.
  The brand name drug industry has no qualms about charging American 
consumers the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, even 
though American tax dollars and American contributions to private 
foundations fund nearly half their research, even though the 
prescription drug industry in this country is the most profitable 
industry in America, even though the prescription drug industry gets 
tax breaks so huge they have only half the tax liability of any other 
industry in this country, and even though more than 50 million 
Americans have no drug coverage, some of whom must choose between food 
and their medicine.
  Prescription drugs are not a luxury item. It is not okay that the 
drug industry overcharges U.S. consumers for products our own tax 
dollars helped to produce. The drug industry has tremendous influence 
over this Congress and especially this White House. Unfortunately, the 
situation may have to get worse before the Federal Government finally 
takes a stand against the outrageous pricing schemes of the drug 
industry. Until that happens, market competition is the only tool we 
have to bring down prices.
  When generics enter the market, the price typically drops as much as 
90 percent. Market competition expands access to Americans who cannot 
afford the monopoly prices that are charged by the brand name 
companies. It spurs drug companies to earn their profits by developing 
new drugs, rather than by overcharging for existing products. It is 
much easier, obviously, to overcharge for existing products than to 
develop new ones. The brand name drug industry has taken to exploiting 
loopholes in the FDA drug approval process to block generic 
competition. So not only do drug companies charge Americans the highest 
price in the world while those drugs are under patent, these companies 
then try to charge Americans ridiculous prices after their patents 
expire by blocking generics from entering the market.
  You would think Congress would at least be interested in keeping drug 
companies from gaming the patent system as a means of cheating American 
consumers.
  Governors from both parties, major businesses like GM and Marriott 
and Verizon and unions and consumer groups and health insurers have 
demanded that Congress close these legal loopholes. Closing these 
loopholes would save American consumers literally hundreds of billions 
of dollars in the next 10 years. Yet, last week, Republican leadership 
blocked action on an amendment that would end drug industry abuses. 
This amendment simply would have prevented drug companies from 
artificially extending their patents, the drugs' protected patents and 
stop them from gaming the FDA patent system.
  Last week, Republican leadership blocked consideration of this 
amendment. They would not, in fact, even let the Committee on Energy 
and Commerce consider the amendment. It may not have been a coincidence 
that the same week that our committee was marking up the prescription 
drug bill, that same week that committee adjourned early one afternoon 
to go to a Republican fund raiser which was underwritten by the 
prescription drug industry. The chair of that Republican fund-raiser 
which netted $30 million was the CEO of a British drug company, 
GlaxoWellcome, donated $250,000 to the Republican cause. The CEO was 
joined by CEOs of other drug companies which contributed $50,000, 
$100,000, $200,000, $250,000 to this Republican fund-raiser.
  It should also come as no surprise that the next day after the fund-
raiser Republicans returned to the committee and, in regular party line 
votes, voted against any kind of real reform, any kind of pro-senior 
prescription drug plan.
  The Democratic prescription drug plan written by and for seniors will 
bring drug costs down. That is what seniors want. The Republican 
prescription drug plan written by and for the prescription drug 
industry does nothing to bring prices down. That is what prescription 
drug companies want.
  I ask my colleagues to support the Democratic plan when it comes in 
front of the House and reject the drug-company-sponsored Republican 
plan.

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