[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15173-15174]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESCRIPTION DRUG REIMPORTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, today the House of Representatives will 
vote for a third time this session in overwhelming bipartisan manner to 
allow Americans to import drugs from Canada and Europe where prices for 
those prescription drugs are 30 to 70 percent cheaper than they are on 
the American shelves at our pharmacies and grocery stores.
  Members of this body on both sides of the aisle last year voted 
against the pharmaceutical industry's intense lobbying where they spent 
well over $200-some-odd million, they hired well over 600 lobbyists to 
try to prevent the American consumers and senior citizens from 
accessing drugs and prescription drugs and medications that their 
doctors prescribed at prices that they can afford.
  People from all over the world come to the United States for their 
medical care. Yet, Americans are forced to go all over the world for 
their medications. That is wrong. We can do better.
  Prices here in the United States are artificially kept high because 
of a closed market. What this would allow, the legislation allowing 
reimportation, would allow Americans to have an open market, a free 
market when it comes to the pricing of prescription drugs.
  Every other product, cars, autos, software, food, we have free 
access, and Americans pay some of the lowest prices in the world. There 
is only one product line Americans have a closed market to and we are 
forced to pay the highest prices in the world and that is in the area 
of prescription drugs.
  In Canada, in Europe, the same medications that we find on our 
shelves

[[Page 15174]]

here are, as I said, 30 to 70 percent cheaper. Americans know that. 2 
million seniors a year go over the Canadian-U.S. border to get their 
prescription drugs with their prescriptions that their doctors have 
asked them to take. Rather than cut pills in half, rather than skip a 
month, rather than skip a day, rather than allow only their spouse to 
get medications and preventing themselves from getting medications, 
those seniors go over to Canada, save hundreds upon hundreds of dollars 
a month in their prescription drugs.
  What this legislation would do is allow the free market to work, 
creating competition, bringing prices down, and ensuring the American 
consumer, American seniors and, most importantly, now that we have a 
prescription drug bill to Medicare, the American taxpayer that they 
would get their fair price and world price for world-class drugs.
  What is ironic here is that the American taxpayer pays for the 
research for these new life saving medications both through the direct 
funding of the National Institute of Health and through the R&D tax 
credit. The American taxpayer is subsidizing the pharmaceutical 
industry's research and development in new life-saving drugs. And yet 
what do we get for all that taxpayer support for the industry? We get 
to pay the highest prices in the world. That is the unique position of 
the American senior citizen and taxpayer.
  The reimportation of prescription drugs would allow our seniors, our 
families who need medications for their children and for their parents, 
would allow them those medications at the prices that consumers in 
Europe and Canada are paying which is 30 to 70 percent cheaper.
  It is the right thing to do not only because we pay for the R&D, but 
it is the right thing to do if you believe in the free market. We 
should allow the free market to work, creating that competition, 
bringing prices down. As I said, literally 2 million seniors a year do 
it every year. They have been doing it for years going to Canada, 
finding somewhere close to a little over a $1 billion worth of savings.
  We are voting on it for the third time here in the House. Hopefully 
in the other body they will now begin to take up this legislation and 
start to create that bipartisan focus on bringing the prices of 
prescription drugs down.
  I set up in my office a Web site, just so my colleagues know, we took 
Costco which is a discount retailer, we have a Costco in Chicago. We 
listed the 10 most used drugs by senior citizens and the price at that 
Costco in Chicago of those 10 medications. Then we took the Costco in 
Toronto, same store, same medications, same discounts. In Canada one 
would save, versus the United States, for those same medications close 
to $1,000 if one bought at the Costco in Canada versus the Costco in 
Chicago. That is a discount retailer. And people know that. And we must 
afford our seniors the ability to get the medications they need at the 
prices they can afford.
  Everybody lately has been touting this Health and Human Services 
discount card, the Medicare discount card. In fact, in Canada one would 
save more than one would on that discount card. In our 70 percent of 
that discount card, the fact is that the reimportation would allow one 
cheaper savings than it does on that discount card. If the discount 
card was designed for senior citizens, it would not be as complicated. 
It was not designed for senior citizens, it was designed for the 
pharmaceutical industries that invested close to $200 million in that 
legislation.

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