[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13805-13806]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                DISPARITY OF 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 tonight again to talk about the 
issue of the disparity between the price that Americans pay for 
prescription drugs and what the rest of the world pays for the same 
drugs.
  On several occasions I have used articles from the newspapers, 
whether it be the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, other 
newspapers, and I started many of my conversations with something that 
Will Rogers said so many years ago, and that is ``All I know is what I 
read in the newspapers.''
  Today I read in one in the publications up here on Capitol Hill a 
story that really surprised me, the first story that they have actually 
done on the whole issue of prescription drugs, and they decided to do 
essentially a piece that destroys the credibility of one of the groups 
that I have gotten much of the research information that I have gotten 
in the past from, and that is the Life Extension Foundation, and I want 
to talk about some of the numbers that they have sent me.
  I have never personally met anybody from Life Extension, but 
everything they have sent me checks out. So I have used their 
statistics in the past, and I will use them in the future. I have also 
been quoting from a book by Katharine Greider. The title of the book, 
and I recommend it to all of my colleagues, is ``The Big Fix: How the 
Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off America.'' I do not know what her 
philosophy is. I do not know what her politics are. I do not know what 
religion she practices, but I have to say that the research that she 
has done is extremely good and it raises some very difficult questions.

                              {time}  2100

  The other thing that I have been doing is talking to Members about 
these huge disparities between what we pay in America and what the rest 
of the world pays for the same drugs. Let me give my colleagues some 
examples. These are my own research, drugs that we actually bought at 
the Munich airport in Munich, Germany, and then we compared what the 
price is in the United States. Let us take the drug Glucophage. 
Glucophage is a wonderful drug, particularly for those people suffering 
from diabetes. Glucophage in the United States, 30 tablets, 850 
milligrams, sells for about $30. That same drug in Germany sells for 
$5.
  We can go on down the line. Cipro. This is the drug Cipro, a very 
commonly prescribed, very effective antibiotic made by a company called 
Bayer. In the United States we usually call it Bayer, Bayer aspirin. We 
are probably more familiar with that. But this drug in the United 
States sells for an average of about $55. It sells in Germany for $35.
  We go on down the list. I will not read the whole list tonight, but 
the one that really chaps my hide is this drug right here. This is 
Tamoxifen. We bought this drug at the airport pharmacy in Munich, 
Germany, for $59.05 American. In this quantity, 100 tablets, 20 
milligrams, in the United States this same drug sells for $360. $60 in 
Germany, $360 here.
  The real point is this. I have shared this story, too. If you go to 
Tokyo, Japan and you order a steak dinner, about the cheapest you will 
find it in Tokyo is about $100. You can buy an equal quality, in fact 
perhaps a better quality steak anywhere here in the United States for 
probably $20. Why is there so much difference between what you pay for 
a steak in Tokyo versus here in the United States? The answer is 
simple. The people of Japan are a captive market. They do not allow 
other products to come in. That is what we have done with drugs in this 
country. We literally have made Americans a captive market.
  We are talking about a prescription drug benefit and everybody is 
talking about coverage. Ladies and gentlemen, the issue is not so much 
coverage, because every senior in America has at least the opportunity 
to buy prescription drug coverage through the AARP and lots of other 
organizations. The problem is not coverage. The problem is 
affordability. We will never solve the entire problem for all of those 
seniors. One of the points that is made by Ms. Greider in her book, she 
mentions a study that was done. This is one of the most damning studies 
and every one of us should be ashamed. The study says that 29 percent 
of seniors say that they have had prescriptions that went unfilled 
simply because they could not afford them.
  A couple of weeks ago I was addressing community pharmacists, and I 
asked them the question: Have you ever had a senior come in and give 
you a prescription and you told that senior how much this was going to 
be and they sort of dropped their head and said, well, maybe I'll be 
back tomorrow. And they do not come back because they cannot afford it. 
That is something we can change, that is within our power to change. 
Shame on us if we do not. I hope you will cosponsor my bill to give 
Americans access to world class drugs at world market prices.

[[Page 13806]]



                          ____________________