Prescription Drug User Fee Amendments of 2007

Floor Speech

PRESCRIPTION DRUG USER FEE AMENDMENTS OF 2007 -- (Senate - May 02, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is not much I can add to the brilliant remarks made by Senator Dorgan. I think he, in a very comprehensive manner, made clear why the Senate and this country should move to prescription drug reimportation. I think he very ably answered the objections that we know are sure to come and made the case as well as could be made.

I want to touch on some personal reflections on this issue. Some years ago, as the Congressman then from the State of Vermont--and I live an hour and a half away from the Canadian border. My State borders Canada. Some years ago, I put together what, in fact, turns out to be the very first bus trip to take constituents over the Canadian border to buy low-cost prescription drugs.

All of us have days which are transformative where something happens we will never forget, and that is the day I will never forget. On that day we took a busload of Vermonters, mostly women, many of the women struggling with breast cancer. We went from St. Albans, VT, to Montreal, Canada. I will never forget the look on the faces of those women who were struggling for their lives when they bought breast cancer medicine at 10 percent of the cost they were paying in the State of Vermont. The drug was Tamoxifen, a widely prescribed drug for those people who are struggling with breast cancer.

These women walked in fighting for their lives, many of whom did not have a lot of money. They walked in there and they could not believe, literally could not believe, the cost of that medicine which they needed to keep them alive. At that moment some years ago--it may well have changed since then--the cost was one-tenth what it was in the United States of America.

The question is a very simple question: How do you have a drug manufactured by a company, manufactured in the same factory, put in the same bottles, sold in Canada, in some cases for one-tenth the price that same medicine is sold in the United States of America? How possibly can that happen?

Now, as it occurs, I am not a great fan of unfettered free trade. I have very serious concerns about what our trade policy is doing in terms of throwing American workers out on the street, moving plants to China and other low-wage countries. But I am always amazed that on the floor of Congress, when it comes to representing the interests of multinational corporations, people are always speaking about how great unfettered free trade is; it is not a problem; American workers going down the street; workers in China paid 30 cents an hour. That is okay. That is part of globalization.

Well, why isn't it part of globalization that prescription drug distributors and pharmacists can pick up FDA safety-approved medicine at a fraction of the price they are currently forced to pay, and lower the cost of prescription drugs in this country very substantially? Why is that not a process of globalization that every Member of the Senate should be supporting?

We should not kid ourselves as to what this debate is about. I think most Americans understand that large multinational corporations have enormous power over the Congress. You have big oil running up recordbreaking profits, receiving tax breaks and corporate welfare. You have credit card companies with tremendous power over what goes on in Congress, able to charge Americans 25, 28 percent usurious interest rates. You have insurance companies blocking national health care efforts so all of our American people can have health care as a right of citizenship. But at the top of the list of powerful, greedy special interests, at the top of that list, that very impressive list, stands the pharmaceutical industry. They are at the top.

So when you talk about powerful interests, look at the pharmaceutical industry and the impact and the power they have in terms of what goes on here in Congress. Since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has spent over $900 million on lobbying activities; $900 million since 1998. That is more than any other industry in the United States of America.

It is hard to believe, but there are now over 1,200 prescription drug lobbyists right here in America, many of them right here on Capitol Hill. That amounts to more than two lobbyists for every Member of the House and the Senate. They have us well covered. These people are paid top dollar as lobbyists. These are former leaders of the Republican Party, former leaders of the Democratic Party.

Let me tell you, they are hard at work today. They will be hard at work tomorrow. What they have done successfully, year after year after year, is when an effort comes up in the House and an effort comes up in the Senate, they descend like locusts into the offices of Members of Congress and say: Don't vote for change. Keep the status quo alive. Make sure the American people continue to pay the highest prices for medicine in the entire world.

Since 2000--I don't know if you are supposed to talk about these things on the floor of the Senate. I will. Since the year 2000, the pharmaceutical companies have contributed almost $250 million in campaign contributions. Let me repeat that. Since the year 2000, the pharmaceutical companies have contributed almost $250 million in campaign contributions.

What this debate is about is not just whether we are going to lower the cost of medicine in this country and save billions and billions of dollars for the consumers of our country, for people with acute and chronic illnesses, for our seniors; it is also about whether the Congress of the United States is, in fact, prepared to stand up to the most powerful, the greediest special interest in the United States of America.

In my view, the time is long overdue for us to begin to make some fundamental changes in our prescription drug policies in this country. The time is long overdue for us to lower the price of medicine for our people, which not only will help people, of course, pay for their prescription drugs, it will lower the entire cost of health care in the United States.

We spend far more money per capita on health care than does any other country on Earth. If we lower the cost of prescription drugs, we will have an impact on that.

Tomorrow I will be speaking at greater length on this issue, but I think the arguments are so clear that prescription drug reimportation makes sense. The idea, as Senator Dorgan has mentioned, that somehow we can import tomatoes and lettuce from farms in Mexico and in Latin America, that is okay,
but we cannot reimport prescription drugs from Canada with FDA regulations, that is impossible, makes sense to nobody at all. Food coming in from China, no problem; FDA-regulated prescription drugs coming from Canada, oh, my word, it can't be done. Give me a break. Of course, it can be done.

What this issue is about is not drug safety. What this issue is about is the profits of the pharmaceutical industry and the enormous power they have over Congress. Now is the time for us to say to the drug companies: You have dominated what goes on year after year after year. You, in the drug industry, wrote the prescription drug Medicare bill. You have resisted year after year every effort to reform how we price medicine in the United States.

Maybe the year 2007 might be the moment in which Members of Congress have the courage to stand up and say enough is enough. Let's support the men and women and children, the seniors of our country. Let's lower the cost of prescription drugs. Let's pass prescription drug reimportation.

I yield the floor.

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