[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14110-14111]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   BRINGING AMERICAN PHARMACEUTICAL PRICES DOWN TO COMPETITIVE LEVELS

  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, once again I rise tonight to talk about 
the high cost of prescription drugs here in the United States, and 
especially the high cost relative to what the rest of the 
industrialized world pays for the same drugs.
  I have told this story to many of my colleagues repeatedly about how 
about a month ago we went to Munich, Germany, and bought a list of 10 
of the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. The total price tag 
for all 10 of those drugs compared to the average price here in the 
United States is about triple. It is more than double what we pay in 
the United States.
  I have used the example of this drug, and this is the actual drug, 
Tamoxifen, one of the most popular, most effective anti-breast cancer 
drugs ever developed. The interesting thing is that the National 
Institutes of Health, using taxpayers dollars, paid for most of the 
research. What makes us even more upset is not just that the American 
taxpayer paid to develop the drug, but the difference now between what 
American consumers have to pay for this drug compared to the rest of 
the world.
  This drug, for example, we bought at the Munich airport pharmacy for 
$59.05 American. To put that in context, this drug sells at pharmacies 
here in Washington, D.C., for $360. In other words, to round off the 
numbers, $60 in Germany, $360 in the United States. Worse than that, 
the American taxpayers paid for the research.
  Like Will Rogers, though, all I know is what I read in the newspaper, 
and this weekend in The Washington Post there is a very compelling 
story. What it essentially says is it is not just Tamoxifen any more. 
In fact, let me just read for you from essentially what is a GAO study.
  The headline is, ``U.S. Netted Little From Cancer Drug, GAO 
Reports.''
  ``The U.S. Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help 
develop Taxol, the best-selling cancer drug ever, but failed to get 
much money back on its investment, according to a government report 
issued yesterday.
  ``Drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb earned $9 billion from Taxol, which 
has been used to treat 1 million cancer patients, but the National 
Institutes of Health received only $35 million in royalties, the 
Government Accounting Office found.''
  Now, on top of that, Medicare has spent over $687 million on Taxol, 
so there are more taxpayer dollars going into Taxol.
  Finally, the report says, and I am shortening it down to the bottom, 
but if you want a copy we will have this up on our Web site by sometime 
tomorrow afternoon, but the bottom line is the GAO, the investigative 
arm of Congress, said that the NIH spent $484 million in research on 
Taxol through 2002.
  Mr. Speaker, we subsidize the pharmaceutical industry in three 
separate ways.
  First of all, we subsidize it on all the money we spend on basic 
research. I am proud of the fact that here in Congress, the NIH, the 
National Science Foundation, even DOD, we will spend this year about 29 
billion taxpayer dollars on various kinds of basic research.

[[Page 14111]]

Much of that research goes to benefit the pharmaceutical industry. So 
we subsidize them through the basic research we pay for them.
  Secondly, we subsidize them through the Tax Code. They receive very 
generous tax benefits for the research we do.
  Finally, and what disturbs us the most, is we subsidize them in the 
prices we pay. Americans pay far more than the rest of the 
industrialized world for prescription drugs.
  I believe Americans should pay their fair share. I think we should be 
willing to subsidize Sub-Saharan Africa, but I do not think we ought to 
have to subsidize the starving Swiss.
  Americans deserve world-class drugs at world market prices. I hope 
Members will support my bill, which I hope to introduce later this 
week, to open up American markets to foreign competition to bring 
prices down to reasonable levels so that all Americans can afford them.

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