Dan Burton: “for some time now, a number of us have been coming to the floor of the House to talk about the high cost of prescription…”

“for some time now, a number of us have been coming to the floor of the House to talk about the high cost of prescription drugs here in the United States. We pay more for prescription drugs than any country on the face of the Earth, and many of our senior citizens and others have been going right across the border into Canada and buying pharmaceutical products for half or one-tenth the cost that they are here in the United States. Now, the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical companies are doing everything they can to stop Americans from buying pharmaceutical products from Canada by saying that there is a safety issue. The fact of the matter is, we checked, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) and myself and others; and we have found no cases, none, where Canadian pharmaceutical products that were made here in the United States and reimported back into this country have caused anybody any harm. Absolutely zero. Now, in my congressional district, the PhRMA companies have been mailing literature to senior citizens saying that there is a safety issue if you buy pharmaceutical products from Canada because they may be contaminated or counterfeit or something else. We have found no cases like that. But they are mailing them into my district trying to scare people trying to influence them to influence me to change my position.”