Gilbert Gutknecht: “Here is what is interesting. Again, this is not my number, but this is what outside experts have told us, that if you…”

“Here is what is interesting. Again, this is not my number, but this is what outside experts have told us, that if you just do reimportation, just reimportation, allowing seniors or anyone to go to their local pharmacy and at least price-shop from country to country to get the best price on the same drug, our estimate is you could save 35 percent. Now, 35 percent of $1.8 trillion is $630 billion. That would go a long ways to helping to pay for the prescription drug coverage for those people who are currently falling through the cracks. We are talking about real money. I think Everett Dirksen said a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money. $1.8 trillion times 35 percent, $630 million is a whole lot of money. I want to congratulate our colleagues for the bill we passed last week. There are a lot of good things in it. But I do want to chastise them on this. The author of that bill stood here in front of this very microphone and said his plan would save about $18 billion over 10 years. Well, that is good. $18 billion versus $630 billion. I will ask America which program they want.”