[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15072-15073]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   AMERICANS PAY TOO MUCH FOR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS UNDER UNFAIR SYSTEM

  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, let me first of all say that the 
gentleman from Ohio who just spoke, he and I strongly disagree. I 
happen to believe that it is time to modernize Medicare, it is time to 
give seniors more choices, and we will come to different conclusions on 
that particular issue. But there is an issue that we do agree on, and 
that is that Americans pay far too much for the same pharmaceuticals.
  Last week, on Thursday, I was privileged to welcome to the Capitol 
and to one of my news conferences a true American hero. Her name is 
Kate Stahl. Kate Stahl wears a little pin that says ``Kate Stahl: Old 
woman.'' She is 84 years old and she is proud of the fact; in fact, she 
describes herself as a drug runner. I would encourage Members to get a 
copy of the June 9 edition of the U.S. News and World Report, and they 
will see a picture of Kate Stahl in that edition. And in there it says, 
and she is quoted as saying, ``I hope they put me in jail.'' Because 
what she does every day, working with the senior Federation in the 
State of Minnesota, is she helps seniors get access to world-class 
drugs at world-market prices. As a result, our own Federal Government 
treats her as if she is a common criminal. But she is prepared to go to 
jail to make a point, and that is that Americans should not have to pay 
the world's highest prices for prescription drugs.
  We also welcomed to Washington last Thursday Dr. Wenner from Vermont. 
She is working with pharmacists in Canada so that her patients from her 
clinics can save, and these are her numbers, have been saving 62 
percent on the same prescription drugs by working with pharmacies in 
Canada.
  Now, the FDA acknowledged at a hearing that we had last week that any 
of the evidence about safety is only anecdotal. As a matter of fact, by 
their own numbers, they cannot come up with a single case where an 
American patient has suffered serious injury as a result of taking a 
legal prescription drug from a pharmacy from a different country. We 
also know that more people have become seriously ill and some have 
actually died from eating imported fruits and vegetables. We know that, 
for example, in one year, just a few years ago, over 1,100 Americans 
became seriously ill by eating raspberries that had been imported from 
Guatemala.
  Now, when we talk about safety, I think the real question is, who are 
we protecting from whom? Who is really being protected by our FDA? More 
and more of us are coming to the conclusion that the only people really 
being protected are the big executives of the large pharmaceutical 
companies. We ask ourselves, why are Americans, the world's best 
customers, paying the world's highest prices? And the answer is, 
because we are a captive market and because our own FDA literally puts 
a border around our country and will not allow Americans to have access 
to those drugs.

                              {time}  1745

  As I mentioned, we import thousands of tons of food every day from 
all over the world. Last year, for example, we imported 318,000 tons of 
plantains. People say, well, somebody might get into these Fed Ex 
packages and get inside the tamper proof packages and somehow 
substitute counterfeit drugs, but again, the evidence of that is 
anecdotal at best, and if we stop and think just for a moment that if 
terrorists really wanted to get at the broad base of the American 
consumers, would they really resort to trying to break into UPS 
offices, Fed Ex offices to get into those packages and somehow tamper 
with those pharmaceuticals? I think common sense tells us that that 
simply is not going to happen.
  We as Americans should be willing to pay our fair share for all of 
the costs of

[[Page 15073]]

the research and development for the miracle drugs that are coming out 
of the pharmaceutical companies that help save lives. We ought to be 
willing to pay our fair share, but we have to be willing to say that it 
is time for us to say, yes, we will subsidize sub-Saharan Africa, but 
we are going to stop subsidizing the starving Swiss.
  I am a Republican. I believe that the word ``profit'' is actually a 
good word. There is nothing wrong with the word ``profit,'' but there 
is something wrong with the word ``profiteer,'' and I am delighted that 
we have people like Kate Stahl who will stand on the shoulders of the 
sons of liberty who threw tea in Boston Harbor because they saw 
something clearly was unfair, and they were not going to take it 
anymore. She represents literally millions of seniors and consumers 
here in the U.S. who are saying enough is enough, we are not going to 
take it anymore.

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