Gilbert Gutknecht: “I do not think this is the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems with seniors being able to afford their…”

“I do not think this is the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems with seniors being able to afford their medications. Clearly, there will still be seniors that fall through the cracks, and I think there legitimately is a role for government to play to help those people who cannot otherwise afford the health saving products they need. But the bottom line is, if we could at least guarantee them they had fairer prices, fewer and fewer of our seniors would need this. Let me also say this is not just about seniors. There are a whole lot of working families in my colleague's district and my district that have children that have very serious medical conditions that are now paying thousands of dollars per month for some of these medications where these companies are willing to sell those same drugs for a lot less in some of these other countries. Let me put a pencil on this, because an estimate done by Dr. Steve Schondelmeir, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Minnesota, his estimate is Americans will spend about $200 billion on prescription drugs this year.”