David Obey: “Madam Speaker, this motion is an effort to prevent this Congress from giving to the drug companies two early Christmas…”

“Madam Speaker, this motion is an effort to prevent this Congress from giving to the drug companies two early Christmas presents. Let me put it this way: this Congress is about to tell the drug companies that they will have carte blanche to do whatever they want on drug costs. And this Congress will accomplish that in two ways. The first step is by obliterating the efforts that we have tried to make to allow the Federal Government to negotiate with drug companies for a lower price for drugs by providing a drug benefit that goes to everyone under Medicare. The Medicare legislation, which this House will be asked to vote on this week, that Medicare legislation, at the instruction of the Republican leadership, has eliminated all possibility for the Federal Government to negotiate lower drug prices. That is gift number one to the drug companies. That means the only remaining way that seniors can get some help on drug prices is by reimporting them from Canada. And the Medicare legislation which will shortly be before us will state that or will pretend that there is a Canadian drug reimport benefit but, in fact, has a benefit which the FDA itself says will not work.”