Gilbert Gutknecht: “I rise again to speak tonight on the issue of prescription drugs and what Americans pay relative to the rest of the…”

“I rise again to speak tonight on the issue of prescription drugs and what Americans pay relative to the rest of the industrialized world. I want to call all Members' attention, if you have not seen this yet, get a copy of today's USA Today and read the lead story. And if you missed it today we are going to try and put this on our Web site, so Members may go to my Web site at Gil.house.gov; and we will have this on by sometime tomorrow afternoon. And we will have the charts, because this is the most compelling article, I think, that I have read so far because it tells the story, it tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in terms of what Americans pay and the sad and pathetic excuse by the FDA about how unsafe this is. It is just outrageous. It is the Food and Drug Administration. This estimate is 1 million. We have had estimates that as many as 10 million Americans next year will buy their drugs from another country. Now, what my vision is is not that people will buy their drugs from other countries, but once you open up markets and you begin to use tamper-proof, counterfeit-proof packaging, you will be able to buy those drugs from your local pharmacy and take advantage of market forces to bring the drug prices down.”