Gilbert Gutknecht: “first of all, I want to clarify something. Section 3 of our bill says including a pharmacist or wholesale importer. We…”

“first of all, I want to clarify something. Section 3 of our bill says including a pharmacist or wholesale importer. We want our local pharmacies to be able to set up correspondent relationships. In terms of the whole issue of people getting bad drugs, I mean, the truth of the matter is, this is happening now; and the reason is because of these huge differentials. We have tried now for 2 years to work with the FDA to come up with a plan so that we can bring down these barriers to local pharmacists and HMOs. Let me give an example. One of the HMOs in Minneapolis, they did a study on their own, and if they could buy their drugs from Winnipeg, if they could realize half of the savings that they recognized in this study, they could save their subscribers $30 million a year. Now, they are already negotiating better deals with their drugs than the average consumer, certainly the average senior citizen can. So what we are talking about is opening up markets. We want to work with the FDA, but for 2 years the FDA has basically refused to return our phone calls. Mr. Speaker, there is a crisis out there; but the crisis is price. I am not here tonight to beat up on the pharmaceutical companies. The truth of the matter is they are going to charge as much as they can. I mean, shame on the pharmaceutical companies, yes, for what they are charging; but shame on the FDA for letting them get away with it, and shame on us for not doing something about it.”