Robert Berry: “The American people, Mr. Chairman, are continuing to be robbed by the brand-name prescription drug manufacturers in this…”

“The American people, Mr. Chairman, are continuing to be robbed by the brand-name prescription drug manufacturers in this country. The reason that happens is because they have patent protection, they have trade barriers to protect them, and they have limited access to generic medicine. It is time that we do something about that. It is time that we make reasonably priced prescription medicine available to the American people. We know that they could be saving $20 billion a year today if they had access to generic medicine that is not available to them today. What we are asking in this amendment is that we provide $2.5 million to the FDA so they can have the ability to approve more generic medicine to the American people that would be offered at a much more reasonable price and create competition in the prescription medicine market that we have to deal with today. Generic drugs cost, on the average, 75 percent less than brand names. As I said, we know that we can save the American people $20 billion a year if we do this. It takes 6 to 12 months to review a new drug application, but it takes 18 months today, because of FDA's limited ability, to approve a generic drug application. This does not make any sense that this would be the case.”