Byron Dorgan: “Yesterday I and 28 of my Senate colleagues introduced legislation allowing the reimportation of FDA-approved…”

“Yesterday I and 28 of my Senate colleagues introduced legislation allowing the reimportation of FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada and other countries. We have introduced legislation of this type before, but we have been blocked from consideration in the Senate. We do not intend to be blocked this year. We intend to get the Senate on record. We believe there are sufficient votes in the Senate to pass a bill dealing with the reimportation of prescription drugs. We very much hope we can get a bill to the President and have that legislation signed. The 29 Senators who have reached agreement on this represent a broad bipartisan consensus in the Senate. That bipartisan group includes Senator Snowe, Senator Grassley, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, Senator Lott, Senator Stabenow, and many others--a broad group of Republicans and Democrats joining together to try to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. Let me show two pill bottles in the Senate. These bottles held the drug called Lipitor, one of the most popular cholesterol-lowering drugs in America. Obviously, the Lipitor tablets that went into these two bottles are made by the same company. In each bottle, it is the same FDA-approved tablet, made by the same company in the same plant and put in the same pill bottle. The only difference is price. This bottle was sent to a Canadian pharmacy that paid $1.01 per tablet; this one was sent to the United States pharmacy that paid $1.81 per tablet.”