Statement of Representative Bernard Sanders
Statement of Representative Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
5/26/2005
I am very pleased to join with my colleagues here today and with 219 bipartisan Members of Congress to call on Speaker Hastert to give the American people a vote on the reimportation of safe and affordable prescription drugs from other well-regulated industrialized countries. As the first member of Congress to take constituents over the Canadian border more than 5 years ago to purchase prescription drugs at a fraction of the price charged in the U.S., I am proud of the overwhelming, bipartisan support this legislation now has in both the House and the Senate and I am here today to say something very simple: Give us a vote.
I will not ever forget the trip I took to Montreal in 1999, where women who were struggling with breast cancer were able to buy Tamoxifen, a widely prescribed breast cancer dug, at one tenth the price they were forced to pay at home. This has got to end - and if the industry had any shame whatsoever it would have discontinued such egregious price-gouging on its own years ago. But it hasn't.
Give us a vote on whether our people should be forced to pay two and three and sometimes even ten times what Canadians and Europeans are charged for the exact same prescription drugs.
This is about whether Congress will turn its back on tens of millions of Americans who desperately need lower prices for their medicines and instead placate an industry that year after year is among the most profitable industries in the world and that fields a swarm of over 800 lobbyists on Capitol Hill to represent its interests.
Give us a vote on whether Congress represents the financial and healthcare interests of the American people or the CEOs and balance sheets of the pharmaceutical industry.
American prescription drug prices - already outrageous - rise at roughly fifteen percent every year and, without action from us, there is no end in sight. Meanwhile, our neighbors to the North and across the Atlantic buy the exact same medicines, made in the exact same facilities, to the exact same safety standards at a fraction of the prices we pay here.
Give us a vote on whether Americans, who are beaten over the head on a daily basis with the supposed virtues of free trade, should be allowed to buy the same safe medicines at the same low prices enjoyed abroad.
Poll after poll and the release of this letter today make one thing very clear: the American people and a strong majority of their representatives in Congress speak with one voice on this issue. Now is the time to vote on and pass genuine, meaningful prescription drug reimportation legislation.
Thank you.
http://bernie.house.gov/statements/20050526174338.asp