Political Quotes

“What galls me a little about this whole subject is that not only are we paying the most expensive prices in the world but all the research that the pharmaceutical industry does is subsidized by the taxpayers. They write it off fully, 100 percent. The taxpayers are literally funding the research. Not only do we fund the research for this new medication, we have the dubious honor to pay the most expensive prices in the world. Second, is through the National Institute of Health, which is an annual budget here in the Federal Government of $27 billion, not all of it going to research for new medications, yet all the primary research that they do, I think it is about half of it, literally is subsidized by the taxpayers. One cannot think of a cancer drug or an AIDS drug, just to name two, that the taxpayers did not do the primary research. The pharmaceutical industry took that research, took it to market, took it through stages one and two, but the primary research was paid for by the taxpayers directly through the National Institutes of Health and then the follow-on research was subsidized through the tax credit research and development. All the R&D that the companies do is tax free, the taxpayers subsidize it; and then we pay the highest prices at our pharmacies for those same drugs that a lot of these companies sell on the shelf in Canada, in England, in France, in Germany for 40 percent to 60 percent less.”