Gilbert Gutknecht: “once again I rise to talk tonight about the unfairness of what Americans pay for prescription drugs compared to what…”

“once again I rise to talk tonight about the unfairness of what Americans pay for prescription drugs compared to what consumers pay around the rest of the industrialized world. I have with me again this chart. Let me just read some of the numbers, the difference between the prices for these drugs at the Metropolitan Pharmacy in Frankfurt, Germany and at one of my pharmacies in Rochester, Minnesota: Nexium, for $60.25 in Germany; $145.33 in the United States. {time} 1930 Norvasc, $19.31 in Germany, $54.83 in the United States. Zyrtec, $34.33 in Germany, $73.02. Prevacid, $35.22, $146.47. Zocor, $23.83 in Germany, $85.39 here. The list goes on. These are 10 of the most commonly prescribed name-brand drugs. The total in Germany, $455.57. The total here in the United States, more than double that, at $1,040.40. Americans pay 128 percent more for exactly the same drugs made in the same plants under the same FDA approval. But many Members ask me, well, how did you become so involved in this issue? What made you so passionate? I would like to share that story of how I got involved in this issue. A number of years ago I had a town hall meeting and there were some seniors who came to the meetings and they told me about going up to Canada to buy their prescription drugs. And to be honest, it was one of those events where I heard but I did not really listen. And then at a subsequent meeting one of the seniors asked me a very tough question.…”