Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 -- Conference Report

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - September 29, 2006)

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Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I applaud the progress we will soon make in the Homeland Security appropriations bill to lower the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans. While the prescription drug reimportation provision included in this bill is certainly not a complete solution to the ever-increasing cost of pharmaceuticals, it is part of the answer.

This legislation includes a provision to allow Americans to bring a 90-day, personal supply of prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, for which they have a valid doctor's prescription, into the country from Canada.

I commend Senators DAVID VITTER and BILL NELSON, who introduced this amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill during the Senate debate, for their dedication to lowering prescription drug prices.

We must reduce prescription drug prices so that Americans are not forced to cut their pills in half or to choose between medicine and groceries. Virtually all democracies in the world, except the United States, negotiate drug prices for their citizens.

The pharmaceutical industry currently sells its Food and Drug Administration, FDA, approved drugs to virtually every other industrialized democracy in the world at prices that are typically 50 percent less than prices in the United States. Ours is an ``open checkbook'' strategy, and the result is massive profits for the drug companies but catastrophe for ordinary Americans.

The growth of prescription drug spending in recent years has outpaced every other category of health care spending. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, prescription drug costs grew at an inflation-adjusted average annual rate of 14.5 percent from 1997 to 2002, reaching $162 billion in 2002. That amount is four times larger than prescription drug costs were in 1990.

An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that average prices for patented drugs in other industrialized nations are 35 to 55 percent lower than in the United States. In its 2002 annual report, the Canadian Patented Medicine Prices Review Board found that U.S.-patented drug prices were 67 percent higher, on average, than those in Canada.

South Dakotans are painfully aware that their neighbors just a few hundred miles to the north, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada, are paying much less for the exact same prescription medication. One of my constituents recently wrote me with his concerns about the huge discrepancy between drug prices in Canada and the United States. The generic version of his medication is not available in the United States, but because he could obtain the generic from Canada, his physician prescribed it and this man successfully used it for many years.

He writes that in Canada, the price of his generic medication is $0.46 per tablet, and the brand-name drug is $0.77 per tablet. After enrolling in Medicare Part D, he was required to use the brand-name drug, available in the United States for $1.19 per tablet--a 16 percent increase over the Canadian brand-name price, and a 62-percent price increase over the generic drug, which got the job done just fine.

This constituent writes:

It appears to me that the Medicare D plan is a ``gold mine'' for the drug makers..... at least for this one drug. It is true that I probably should NOT complain because under the Medicare D I only pay my co-payment. However, my concern is not so much my drug cost but the fact that the American taxpayer is being cheated because of the much higher cost per tablet that is paid to the drug producer under the Medicare D program than if the drugs were purchased on a competitive bid procedure..... After all, I am also an American taxpayer so it does concern me.

Ehile reimportation is an important step forward, it is only a start in our effort to improve access to necessary medications at affordable prices. We need to go further and allow Americans access to Canadian prices at their local pharmacy. They should not have to take buses to Canada to access these savings.

To that end, I remain dedicated to enacting the provisions of legislation I introduced with a bipartisan group of colleagues, the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2005, S. 334. This bill would provide for the safe importation of prescription drugs from Canada that are both approved by the FDA and manufactured in an FDA-approved plant. Eventually, once the FDA establishes the appropriate safety protocols included in the legislation, this bill would allow individuals to purchase drugs directly from Canadian and U.S. wholesalers, and pharmacies could import drugs from facilities in several countries that are registered, fully inspected, and approved by the FDA.

So while I applaud the Senate on this small step forward in its efforts to reduce prescription drug prices for Americans, I remain committed to working with my colleagues to create additional initiatives that will lower the cost of prescription drugs.

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