T. Gorton: “Yesterday, a group of 22 Washington State senior citizens boarded a bus in Seattle and drove to British Columbia in…”

“Yesterday, a group of 22 Washington State senior citizens boarded a bus in Seattle and drove to British Columbia in Canada to purchase their prescription medicine. Collectively, those 22 individuals saved $12,000 by taking that bus ride--an average of more than $550 per individual. It is stories like this that have taken place over the last 2 or 3 years that bring me here today. Every day, all across our northern and southern borders, Americans leave the U.S. in order to purchase products discovered, developed, manufactured, and sold in the United States, but substances, prescription drugs, that are far less expensive in Canada, Mexico, and for that matter, in the United Kingdom and across Europe than here in the United States. My own office did an informal survey and found that for the ten most commonly prescribed drugs, prices in British Columbia average 60-percent less than prices for the identical drugs in the identical quantities in the State of Washington.”