Gilbert Gutknecht: “It is $630 billion over the next 10 years. If we do not do this, and I know people are coming up with discount cards and…”

“It is $630 billion over the next 10 years. If we do not do this, and I know people are coming up with discount cards and all of the rest. They say we can get a 20 percent or 30 percent discount. A 30 percent discount off of $360 is not enough to make this program work. Ultimately, you have to have access to markets. I am not in favor of price controls, and I do not like what a few of the countries do in terms of price controls. I want open markets because I know what markets do; markets level. Ultimately, we will pay less; the Germans will pay more. That is how this will work long term, and that is fair, that is reasonable, and it is time we do it. The second thing, to get to your point, I think we ought to sic the General Accounting Office after these guys and get answers to these questions. Because these are legitimate questions that our constituents, the American citizens who send us here to Washington, have a right to know. Somebody ought to get inside those books and find out if it is true. For example, one of the arguments that the pharmaceutical industry makes is that it costs $800 million to develop a new drug, but they never back it up. They never open their books so we can see that, yes, it really is $800 million. The truth of the matter is more and more of us are becoming very skeptical about how much it actually costs to bring a new drug to market and how much they really spend on research and development.”