Gilbert Gutknecht: “I rise today to talk about outrageously high drug prices and what we pay for drugs in the United States compared to what…”

“I rise today to talk about outrageously high drug prices and what we pay for drugs in the United States compared to what the rest of the world is paying. There is a group down in Florida, and they have been doing this research for a number of years, called the Life Extension Foundation or the Life Extension Network, and they have been doing research in terms of what Americans pay for prescription drugs and what the average European price for those same drugs, made in the same FDA-approved facilities, under the same FDA-approved methodology. These are the exact same drugs, and let us look at some of these. One that we became very familiar with in the last several months is a drug that is made in Germany. It is called Cipro. We bought an awful lot of Cipro when we started having anthrax mailed to places in Washington and New York. Cipro is a very effective antibiotic. The average United States price for a 30-day supply is $87.99. That same drug in Germany sells for $40.75. The story gets worse when we look at some of the more expensive drugs. Let us take the drug Claritin, for example, which is going off patent here in the United States, but it still sells for about an average of $89 for a 30-day supply in the United States. That exact same drug sells for $18.75 over in Europe.”