Bill Clinton: “You might be interested to know that the drug companies, a lot of them are worried about it, and they've come out…”

“You might be interested to know that the drug companies, a lot of them are worried about it, and they've come out opposed to my plan, even though there's no price control in my plan. But if we represent you and millions of other people like you, we'll have a lot of market power, we'll be able to bargain for better prices. And I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing. The other thing you should know is--maybe most of you do know this-- I didn't know this until a few years ago and my former Senator, David Pryor, who is very interested in seniors and drug prices told me this, and then when I became President and began to manage the budget, I confirmed it--Americans sometimes pay many times higher prices for drugs than Europeans, for example, pay for the same drugs. So our companies are only too happy to sell in the European market at cost because--much lower cost--and they make money doing it because they recover all the cost of developing new drugs from Americans. And then the Europeans put actual price controls on them, and they sell anyway. Now, I honor the research and development of new drugs by our pharmaceutical companies. The Government spends billions of dollars every year supporting such research, and we should. If America is on the cutting edge, maybe it's worth a premium for it. But I also believe that elderly people on fixed incomes should not be bankrupt for doing it. That's what this--so what I'm trying to do is to strike the right balance here. I want to hold down future increases as much as we can, not by price controls, but by using the market power of the Government. And we'll have to be reasonable, because we're not going to put those companies out of business, and we're not going to stop them from doing research because we'd be cutting off our nose to spite our face. We wouldn't do that. But we would be able to give people like you some protection, as well as the guarantee of coverage. And I think it will be a good thing. [Participant Jack Witt mentioned that his sister- in-law bought prescription drugs in Mexico because they cost less than in the United States. He suggested that the U.S. Government purchase the drugs and provide them to seniors at a fraction of the cost.]”