On the recordMay 24, 2012
this amendment is one that is a bipartisan amendment. Senator Vitter is cosponsoring this with me, also Senators Franken, Shaheen, Kohl, Tom Udall, Tim Johnson, Klobuchar, Merkley, Sanders, and the Presiding Officer, Senator Brown. This amendment addresses the very same issue that the Senator from Maine was talking about; that is, how do we bring down the price of prescription drugs? How do we get competition into the market for prescription drugs? We have a circumstance today in which an anticompetitive, anticonsumer practice is engaged in, and our amendment will change the law so that practice can no longer be engaged in. The practice I am talking about is the entering into so-called pay-for-delay settlements between brand-name drugs--brand-name pharmaceutical companies and generic manufacturers. These pay-for-delay settlements have the effect of delaying timely access to generic drugs. These agreements between companies shield billions of dollars in sales each year from effective competition. The pharmaceutical companies benefit from this lack of competition and they do so at the expense of consumers and they do so at the expense of the Federal Government, since the Federal Government is a very large consumer and purchases a substantial amount of prescription drugs for the military and in other ways. A preliminary estimate from the CBO indicates that this amendment will reduce direct spending by hundreds of millions of dollars at a minimum.…
