[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              THE PHARMACEUTICAL MARKET ACCESS ACT OF 2005

  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, I rise again tonight to talk about the 
high cost of prescription drugs here in the United States relative to 
what the rest of the people in the industrialized world pay for the 
same drugs.
  Recently there was an article in The Wall Street Journal which talked 
about how much name-brand prescription drugs have gone up just in the 
last year; and I think in that article they said over the last 5 years 
prescription drugs have gone up more than twice the rate of inflation. 
In fact, I think it is more like three times the rate of inflation. 
These are drugs that have been on the market for a long period of time, 
and the research costs were paid for a long time ago.
  Recently, I got some research together from some pharmacies in three 
cities of five of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United 
States. First, Lipitor, which is a drug which is made in Ireland. Every 
single tablet is made in Ireland, and it is exported around the world. 
The price of a 30-day supply of Lipitor in London, England, was $40.88. 
That same drug in Athens, Greece, was $55.65; and in the United States, 
$76.41.
  The next drug here is Nexium, the new purple pill: 30 tablets, 20 
milligrams, London, $42.23; Athens, $57.09; the United States, $138.06.
  We compared the prices of Previcet, Zoloft, and Zyrtec. If you add 
them up, the price of those five drugs in London, $195.95; in Athens, 
those same five drugs, $231.04; but here in the United States, $507.96.
  Why is this important? Well, this year, according to the head of 
pharmacology at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Steve Schondelmeyer, 
according to him, this year, Americans will spend $200 billion on 
prescription drugs. And if you compare what Americans pay for the same 
name-brand drugs compared to the industrialized countries around the 
rest of the world, we are paying at least 30 percent more. In fact, I 
think it may be more like 50 to 75 percent more, but let us take 30 
percent. Thirty percent of $200 billion is $60 billion.
  I believe if we treated prescription drugs the way we treat every 
other product and allowed Americans to have access to those drugs and 
those products as we do with other products, you would see prices in 
the United States drop dramatically.
  That is why I have reintroduced a bill that has passed several times; 
in fact, we have improved it this year, made it even safer, the 
Pharmaceutical Market Access Act of 2005. I hope Members will go to my 
Web site at gil.house.gov, get the facts, take a look at these charts, 
get a copy of the bill, and decide to become a cosponsor. It is 
important, because we need to send a message that Americans deserve to 
have world-class access to world-class drugs at world-market prices, 
and when we do, we will see the prices here in the United States 
reflect more what is the average among the industrialized world.
  So I hope my colleagues will join me. Go to my Web site at 
gil.house.gov; there is a lot of information there. We have about 70 
sponsors right now; we would like to get that to 220. Please join me in 
the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act of 2005.

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