The Public Record
Let me tell my colleagues, the status quo is not fine. Let me give my colleagues some of the reasons: Kathi Beck, 24, Eugene, Oregon; Tami Bickett, 25, Powell Butte, Oregon; Scott Blecha, 27, Clatskanie, Oregon; Levi Brinkley, 22, Burns…
we have had a very lively discussion. This is an important debate. Ultimately, it is about hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans pay and will be forced to pay if we do not do something about it. There is nothing in it for any of…
Billions. And that is when I began to move. As Winston Churchill once said, ``The difference between a fan and a fanatic is, a fanatic is one who cannot change their mind and will not change the subject.'' I have become a fanatic on this…
coming back to the abortion piece, if anybody knows what the rules are on the drug RU-486, it is the drug companies that make it. We talk about Canada and Mexico, we do not even mention Mexico in our legislation because we only talk about…
Exactly. It is all funded by the pharmaceutical companies. We know that, and we will be able to prove that within the next 72 hours. But let me come back to this point. They know the rules. You cannot get the abortion drug RU-486 with a…
we have plenty of examples. Before the gentleman goes, one of the issues that I briefly referenced in my opening remarks was that up until the last several days I have been very hesitant to criticize the pharmaceutical industry because in…
I want to talk about one in particular. Her name is Kate Stahl. Kate Stahl is 84 years old. She is a very active member of the Senior Federation back in Minnesota, and she was quoted in a recent copy of U.S. News and World Report, and the…
I have been astonished at the response by some of the people here in Washington. We all claim to be very concerned with the fact that we have lost over 2 million manufacturing jobs in the last 4 years; and some people are saying, well, the…
This is not a matter of right versus left. It is a matter of right versus wrong, and it is simply wrong to require that Americans pay the world's highest prices for prescription drugs, even though we are the world's best customers. In…
Absolutely. I know the gentleman wants to catch his plane, but I just want to say this. Regardless of what happens in the next week or two, we are not going to go away. This issue will not go away. We will stay here, on a bipartisan basis…
We are only talking about FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved facilities... We want to make certain that they are not treated like common criminals, because right now seniors are doing this. There was a study done by a University of Texas…
In fact, in many of the cases, I believe these drugs were made in the same plants, and they are shipped around the world. All we really are saying in our bill is let us do with prescription drugs essentially what we do with every other…
We are only talking about FDA drugs, and more importantly than that, you are correct. There are only, as I am told, about 600 facilities in the world that can produce FDA-approved drugs, and so that is the only drugs that we would permit…
I rise tonight in honor of Minnesota's 135th Infantry. It is hard for us to imagine what it must have been like in the spring of 1861 when cannons announced the first battle of the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor…
let me just talk about a couple of things, and I think as we talk about this new benefit, and I think we all recognize there are far too many seniors that are not getting the prescription drugs that they need, there was a study done…
Unfortunately, on Taxol I do not have that comparison. I do not think it is on my list, but the comparison is essentially the same. It is about three times more, or at least it was when it came off patent in the United States; it was more…
let me first of all say that the gentleman from Ohio who just spoke, he and I strongly disagree. I happen to believe that it is time to modernize Medicare, it is time to give seniors more choices, and we will come to different conclusions…
We import every day thousands of tons of food. It surprises me how many tons. In fact, the number I remember is we import roughly 318,000 tons of plantains every year, and every time we eat a plantain that comes in from a foreign country…
About one third. And I say shame on us because we have the power to do something about that. I spoke several weeks ago to the Community Pharmacists, and I just had received this report from the Kaiser Foundation. I asked them as I looked…
As we mentioned earlier, this is not a matter of right versus left, this is right versus wrong. It is simply wrong to make American consumers pay the world's highest prices for drugs which largely the American taxpayers helped develop in…
I think he used the word earlier and I think it is the critical word. He said that we are a captive market, and if we look around the world, whether it is beef and Japan or blue jeans in the former Soviet Union, anytime there is a captive…
No. I have plenty of information, but the interesting thing about these charts and these comparisons, if people doubt what they paid for these drugs, we have the receipts. So we can literally go through and say, yes, this is what we paid…
Here is the interesting thing. They do not have price controls in Germany. What they do in Germany is what we ought to do here, and that is they allow the pharmacists to shop for the best price.
It was paid for by the taxpayers. Originally, as it was developed, the drug was called Warfarin. They are basically identical drugs, but Warfarin is used as a rat poison. It is a blood thinner. What they do is they give it to rats, rats…
There are only 600 FDA-approved facilities that make prescription drugs in the world. They have to be made in an FDA-approved facility. So, yes, these drugs essentially, this probably came out of a plant in the United States. Or it may…
Politicians like Gilbert Gutknecht
