[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14377-14378]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        THE HIGH COST OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from MN (Mr. Gutknecht) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, once again I rise to talk tonight about 
the unfairness of what Americans pay for prescription drugs compared to 
what consumers pay around the rest of the industrialized world.
  I have with me again this chart. Let me just read some of the 
numbers, the difference between the prices for these drugs at the 
Metropolitan Pharmacy in Frankfurt, Germany and at one of my pharmacies 
in Rochester, MN: Nexium, for $60.25 in Germany; $145.33 in the United 
States.

                              {time}  1930

  Norvasc, $19.31 in Germany, $54.83 in the United States. Zyrtec, 
$34.33 in Germany, $73.02. Prevacid, $35.22, $146.47. Zocor, $23.83 in 
Germany, $85.39 here. The list goes on. These are 10 of the most 
commonly prescribed name-brand drugs. The total in Germany, $455.57. 
The total here in the United States, more than double that, at 
$1,040.40. Americans pay 128 percent more for exactly the same drugs 
made in the same plants under the same FDA approval.
  But many Members ask me, well, how did you become so involved in this 
issue? What made you so passionate? I would like to share that story of 
how I got involved in this issue. A number of years ago I had a town 
hall meeting and there were some seniors who came to the meetings and 
they told me about going up to Canada to buy their prescription drugs. 
And to be honest, it was one of those events where I heard but I did 
not really listen. And then at a subsequent meeting one of the seniors 
asked me a very tough question. She said, why are we treated like 
common criminals for going to Canada to save some dollars on our 
prescription drugs? Well, I did not have a very good answer.
  And then a few months later something happened that had nothing to do 
with prescription drugs. The price of live hogs in the United States 
collapsed. The price of pigs dropped from about $37 per hundred weight 
down to about $7. It was one of the worst catastrophes for American 
pork producers since the Great Depression. And they did what many 
constituents do. They called their Congressman and said, can you not do 
something about this? And I said, well, I do not know what I can do. 
And they said, well, can you not somehow at least stop all these 
Canadian pigs from coming into our market,

[[Page 14378]]

making our supply-demand situation even worse? Is not there something 
you can do about that, Congressman?
  So I called the Secretary of Agriculture, I called the Secretary of 
Commerce, and I got essentially the same answer. They both said, well, 
that is called NAFTA. That is called free trade. We have open markets. 
And finally, to the Secretary of Commerce I said, wait a second; you 
mean we have open borders when it comes to pork bellies but not when it 
comes to Prilosec? And he sort of laughed on the other end of the phone 
and said, well, I guess that is right. And I said, well, that does not 
sound right to me.
  And so this little pilgrimage started there with the price of pigs. 
And there is something wrong with a system that protects the large 
pharmaceutical companies, but does nothing to protect our pork 
producers. And so I began to do research and realized how much more 
Americans pay.
  Now, I do not want price controls. In fact, I do not want people 
buying their prescription drugs over the Internet. But I think it 
should be legal. What I really want is American pharmacists to have 
access to what pharmacists in Europe have. It is called parallel trade. 
Because that pharmacist in Frankfurt, Germany can go ahead and order 
his drugs from Sweden or Norway or France or Spain, wherever they can 
buy them cheapest.
  You see, there was a President by the name of Ronald Reagan who said 
that markets are more powerful than armies. And it really is time that 
we use market pressures and market forces to help control the runaway 
prices of prescription drugs. I believe American consumers have a right 
to that. I believe American consumers have a right to world-class drugs 
at world-market prices. So I hope Members will join me in this great 
effort to make certain that we open markets, that we create a 
competitive market so that Americans can buy Zocor for $30 rather than 
$85. We are not asking for a free lunch. We are just asking for a fair 
price.

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