David Price: “as we consider H.R. 3161, the FY 2008 Agriculture Appropriations bill, I want to voice my serious concerns about the…”

“as we consider H.R. 3161, the FY 2008 Agriculture Appropriations bill, I want to voice my serious concerns about the provision in the bill that would prevent the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, from protecting U.S. consumers from the import of unsafe pharmaceuticals. While we have had a de facto policy of allowing the importation of personal use quantities of prescription drugs from Canada, the bill before us would for the first time allow wholesalers and pharmacists to import bulk quantities of prescription drugs from any country, regardless of origin. The resulting increase in unregulated drug imports into this country would be exponential. Such an increase would almost certainly lead to a rise in the number of counterfeit drugs and drugs shipped without adequate shipping safety precautions, creating serious health risks for patients. I understand the need, sometimes the desperate need, for less expensive medications. To a great extent, this need is a function of the failure of our health care system to uniformly provide adequate health care coverage. For some 44 million Americans, the system fails to provide any coverage at all. And the Medicare Part D doughnut hole continues to make medications unaffordable for many seniors. We clearly must find a way to make health care, including prescription drugs, affordable to more Americans. But reimportation on this scale is simply the wrong prescription for what ails us.”