The Public Record
One-sixth. That will not stand. That is defending the indefensible, and sooner or later, it may not happen this year, may not happen next year, but sooner or later this wall will collapse just like the walls of Jericho. I want to thank the…
the gentleman quoted one of my favorite Presidents. Let me quote another one. Ronald Reagan said, ``Markets are more powerful than armies.'' This idea that American consumers should be charged $360 for these pills when we can buy them in…
If I could have one additional minute, I do want to mention to all my colleagues, we have been working for a year trying to come up with a bill that would make sense. We think we have it. It is called the Pharmaceutical Affordability Act…
I am not going to get into why. All I know is that I took an oath of office. You took an oath of office. We are here to serve the public interest. The pharmaceutical industry does not work for me. I do not work for them. But the boys over…
I think the people who developed this drug, Glucophage, are entitled to be rewarded for it. I believe in that. I believe in intellectual property rights. But I also say why is it we pay so much when the Germans can buy it so cheaply?
Exactly. I am not going to argue about the special benefits, but the bottom line is we subsidize the development of new drugs through the NIH, through the National Science Foundation, through the Department of Defense. They do a lot of…
I think the time has come. Again, as Ronald Reagan said, quoting John Adams, facts are stubborn things. All we really want is the facts. I am not getting into motives. I do not care. I do not care why they do things. To me, that is not my…
On this particular package, the price here in the United States is $29.95. This is a smaller package. We bought this in Germany for $5.
In fact, in this ad it says, look how easy Congress has made it for you to save. That is what it says. Congress has spoken. Unfortunately we, put this language into that bill, in the conference committee and at somebody's request that says…
But that is the slender reed upon which our own FDA has constructed this wall around the United States; and that is the reason, my colleagues, that American consumers pay $360 and Germans pay $60.
As the gentleman saw at the hearing, they are very oblique even on that issue. Because we can demonstrate it is safer to buy drugs from a legal pharmacy. And we are not talking about illegal drugs. I want to make that very clear. We are…
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…
I try not to get into that because the presidents of the large pharmaceutical companies do not work for us, but the head of the FDA does. I think the presidents of some of the pharmaceutical companies have to answer to shareholders and the…
Twenty-nine percent of the prescriptions written to senior citizens go unfilled because they cannot afford them, and they are proud people. How many people, how many women in America cannot afford Tamoxifen? Now, maybe they could afford…
So the idea that somehow it is easier for somebody to contaminate a drug going via UPS in a sealed package with a bar coded technology using counterfeit-proof packaging, that it is easier somehow to adulterate that drug than it would be to…
If this is safe enough for the U.S. Treasury, this is the same company that has developed these technologies to make counterfeit-proof packaging. I will be introducing a bill sometime in the next week; and I am trying to get, I hope…
The interesting thing, Chairman Burton, is that we cannot guarantee anything. You cannot guarantee that when you pull into a gas station and you fill your car up that that is in fact unleaded gasoline and not buttermilk. The truth of the…
I am the vice chairman of the Committee on Science, and our research shows Americans represent something like 6 percent of the world's population, but we represent over 50 percent of the basic research done in the world. It is because of…
Twenty-nine percent. I do not know if the gentleman has ever experienced this, but I met this morning with community pharmacists, and I asked them this question: How many of you have had the example where a senior citizen comes in to buy a…
Six times the amount. And here is the real tragedy. There are American women who need this drug and they cannot afford it.
Not much. They wave as it goes by. But they do keep records as well; and according to the FDA, eating imported strawberries, something like 25,000 Americans have gotten ill and some have died from eating imported strawberries. Yet we eat…
The interesting thing is the FDA does not keep those records. They are only concerned about drugs being safe and effective. But Dr. Steve Schondelmeier, one of the top pharmacologists in the world, certainly in America, he has a great…
Six times. I do not care what kind of a discount card you have, the differences are still too huge. We have an obligation to our taxpayers to make certain that if we are going to have a prescription drug benefit for people who need that…
I think that about says it all. As a matter of fact, let me just close with this. The Congress has spoken. When we voted on this matter in the House the last time, 323 of our colleagues voted with us on this.
I am so honored to be here tonight to pay tribute to our friend, Larry Combest. A lot has already been said, and I do not want to be redundant and repeat some of the things that have been said, but I would like to mention a couple of…
Politicians like Gilbert Gutknecht
