Byron Dorgan: “This is life or death for a lot of people, this issue of prescription drug pricing. Yes, we need to put a prescription…”

“This is life or death for a lot of people, this issue of prescription drug pricing. Yes, we need to put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare Program. I support that strongly. But if we do not do something to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices, we will simply break the bank, in my judgment. That is why we need reimportation. And we need the generic amendment--the base bill. We need to do both of these things. I am not interested in compromising safety under any condition or any circumstance. This amendment is very simple. It says, in part, that the Secretary of Health and Human Services can suspend and will suspend and shall suspend the implementation of this reimportation if, in fact, there is a counterfeiting problem, or other problems such as terrorism. The issue of counterfeit drugs that had been raised, the issue of terrorism, has nothing at all to do with this amendment. We are talking about licensed pharmacists, licensed distributors, FDA-approved drugs, FDA-approved plants--a system in which those from the U.S. who are licensed to do so can get the exact same prescription drug safely from Canada at much cheaper prices and pass those savings along to customers.”