Political Quotes

“Well, the great irony here, and again if the gentleman will yield, a gentleman who I have great respect for, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), was down here on the floor earlier talking about this anomaly, I will say, where we are talking about free markets being able to set the price. And what has happened here in this country, the great shame that has taken place here in this country is that the profitability or the profits garnered in this industry have been done almost exclusively on the backs of the elderly and those who can least afford to pay it. And why do we know this and why have we asserted that it is a free market approach? Because every survey, every study that has been done, whether it be internally in our own country, whether it be in Mexico, in Canada, whether it be in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, or Germany, what we found consistently is that their citizens are able to enjoy, on average, a 40 percent differential in terms of what they pay, not for generics but for the exact same prescription drugs. Shame on us. And that is why I think people in this body, if we are allowed an opportunity to vote, and I cannot even believe as an American that I am standing here on the floor of Congress and saying if we are allowed the opportunity to vote. These are the people that we are sworn to serve, and yet bringing this issue that universally everybody agrees with to the floor has been the most agonizing, painstaking process.”