[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24256-24257]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000
              THE COST TO AMERICANS OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise again to speak tonight on the 
issue of prescription drugs and what Americans pay relative to the rest 
of the industrialized world.
  I want to call all Members' attention, if you have not seen this yet, 
get a copy of today's USA Today and read the lead story. And if you 
missed it today we are going to try and put this on our Web site, so 
Members may go to my Web site at Gil.house.gov; and we will have this 
on by sometime tomorrow afternoon.
  And we will have the charts, because this is the most compelling 
article, I think, that I have read so far because it tells the story, 
it tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in terms 
of what Americans pay and the sad and pathetic excuse by the FDA about 
how unsafe this is. It is just outrageous. It is the Food and Drug 
Administration.
  This estimate is 1 million. We have had estimates that as many as 10 
million Americans next year will buy their drugs from another country.
  Now, what my vision is is not that people will buy their drugs from 
other countries, but once you open up markets and you begin to use 
tamper-proof, counterfeit-proof packaging, you will be able to buy 
those drugs from your local pharmacy and take advantage of market 
forces to bring the drug prices down.
  As my colleague from Indiana pointed out earlier, the chart on the 
front talks about how much more Americans pay than the consumers in 
other countries. I have often said I am willing to subsidize the people 
in sub-Saharan Africa, I do not think we ought to have to subsidize the 
starving Swiss. It is time for them to pay their fair share for the 
cost of prescription drugs. The surest way to do that is to open up 
markets so you will see prices level around the world. And Americans 
will pay a lot less.
  How much less? Well, the Swiss pay 58 percent less than American 
consumers. In Great Britain they pay 60 percent less. In Canada they 
pay 67 percent less than American consumers. In France they pay 102 
percent less than American consumers. And in Italy, 112 percent. Now 
these are not backwater countries, ladies and gentlemen. These are 
industrialized countries that have regimens similar to ours.
  If you go to the inside of USA Today it even gets better because they 
list some of the prices. I have shown my charts and I have had people 
say, Oh, well, that is from some goofy group, or, You cannot accept 
that. Well, these are not my charts anymore. These are charts that were 
done with research by USA Today.
  When you look at the price differentials, it is exactly what my 
charts have shown. And that is, for example, on the drug Coumadin, 
which my 87-year-old father takes, it is a blood thinner, I have a 
package right here that we bought in Munich, Germany. It is Coumadin, 
it was developed at the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Schools as 
a rat poison, but Coumandin can be bought in Canada, 10 milligrams, 100 
tablets, for $43.58. That same package in the United States sells for 
$99.99.
  Tamoxifen, we have talked about that before here on the House floor. 
In the United States this particular package that they bought was 
$61.99. The same package of the drug in Canada sells for $9.04. That is 
more than six times as much.
  Members, the time has come for us to take real action.

[[Page 24257]]

  I want to congratulate others in the House who helped lead the fight 
so that at least the House now has gone on record that this is 
unacceptable. More importantly, we have sent a message not only to the 
pharmaceutical industry but to our own FDA. The FDA does not work for 
them; they work for us. It is time for the Senate, the Members in the 
other body to do the same thing, to send the message that the status 
quo is not acceptable.
  Americans are voting with their feet. They are voting with their feet 
to buy prescription drugs. But remember, Members, next November they 
are going to vote for us or our opponents based on how we voted on 
issues like whether or not we will have affordable drugs here in the 
United States of America.

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