Dan Burton: “I come here tonight to set the record straight because last night the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Mr.…”

“I come here tonight to set the record straight because last night the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Mr. Mark B. McClellan, made some statements in a speech before the National Press Club that I think need to be corrected. One of the big problems that we face as a Nation is that pharmaceutical products and the cost of them is totally out of line with the rest of the world. For instance, and I have used this example many times on the floor of the House, a woman who has breast cancer, a doctor will tell her the drug of choice is Tamoxifen, and Tamoxifen in Canada costs about one-sixth or one-seventh of what it does here in the United States. There are a number of other pharmaceutical products that cost five, six, or seven times what they cost here in the United States. The same thing is true in Germany, in Spain, and France and a lot of other countries in the world. So the American people are paying five, six, or seven times what it costs in other parts of the world for the very same pharmaceutical product.”