Drug Importation

Floor Speech

DRUG IMPORTATION -- (Senate - May 07, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me congratulate the Senator for his outstanding leadership on this issue. Let me just pick up right from where he left off. He and I and Senator Snowe and a number of us have been dealing with this issue for many years. My involvement came in 1999, when I took a busload of Vermonters, including many women who were struggling for their lives with breast cancer.

Many of those women did not have a lot of money, and they also went across the Canadian border. They also purchased Tamoxifen. In those days, the price they paid was one-tenth the price, one-tenth the price compared to what they were paying in the United States. Here you have women struggling for their lives, who do not have a lot of money, and were paying one-tenth the price.

This amendment is a big deal. This amendment will mean that Americans from one end of our country to the other, people with chronic illnesses, senior citizens who run into the doughnut hole, so-called doughnut hole on Medicare Part D, that finally these Americans, our Americans, our people, will no longer continue to be ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry and be forced to pay by far the highest prices in the industrialized world for the same exact medicine which people in Canada, people in Germany, people all over Europe receive at far lower prices--the same medicines, same companies, same factory, except we pay far higher prices.

There is very strong support for this legislation. Millions of Americans are already supporting this legislation by getting into their cars and going over the Canadian border. The AARP and other senior organizations support this amendment. My understanding is that the AARP intends to note on their scorecard that a vote for the Cochran amendment--which is clearly a poison pill--is a vote against reimportation.

I would urge my colleagues, if you disagree with reimportation, vote no. But a vote for the Cochran amendment is, in fact, a vote no.

You have heard from Senator Snowe. You have heard from Senator Dorgan. The arguments over safety are just not accurate. This bill details in great length an entire regimen as to how we can make sure all of the prescription drugs reimported into the United States are safe and FDA approved.

I always find it remarkable that every day, huge amounts of imported food are coming into this country. I do not hear a hue and cry about whether that food is inspected.

Let me quote from the May 1st New York Times:

More than 135 countries ship food items to the United States. Canada, Mexico and China have led the way with China shipping nearly five times as much in food items to the United States as it did in 1996.

China is importing more and more food into the United States. Where are the FDA inspectors? Are they all over the farms in China making sure these products are safe? I have not heard one word about that issue. This legislation has built in the strongest prescription drug safety regimen we have ever seen.

Let me tell you what this debate is really about. It is not about prescription drug safety. It is about the power of the pharmaceutical industry, which in a city that has enormously powerful special interests, we have the pharmaceutical industry standing uniquely alone as the most important, if you will, and, in my view, greedy lobby in the entire United States of America. Here it is. Do you want to know what the issue is? Here it is: pharmaceutical industry lobbying.

From 1998 to 2006 they spent $1.1 billion for lobbying; 1998 to 2006, $1.1 billion in lobbying.

The pharmaceutical industry has over 1,000 well-paid lobbyists right here on Capitol Hill: former heads of the Republican Party, former leaders in the Democratic Party. Whenever anybody stands up for justice, whenever anybody stands up to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs in this country so that the American people can afford these lifesaving medicines, these lobbyists descend like locusts on all of our offices in the Senate, in the House. That is what they do.

It is not just the amount of money they spend on lobbying. They spend a substantial amount of money on campaign contributions: From 1990 to 2006, $139 million in campaign contributions; 2006 alone, $19 million. That is power. What this debate is about is not just the need to lower the cost of prescription drugs in America, as important as that is. What this debate is more significantly about is whether the Congress of the United States has the courage to stand up to the greediest, most powerful special interests in this country.

In November the American people went to the polls. They said they want a change in the direction in which this country is moving. Clearly, that election had a lot to do with Iraq. It certainly did. It had a lot to do with global warming, I believe. But it also, in any view, had a lot to do with the understanding that year after year wealthy and powerful special interests have dictated the terms of the debate, have paid for the legislation which has come through the Senate and through the House.

The drug companies have managed to do something rather amazing. Virtually all of the Members of the Senate and the House look at economic issues through two lenses. No. 1, in order to protect consumers, we say: Let there be free market competition. That is the way to lower the costs of the product. And there is truth to that.

The other way that we can protect consumers is through Government regulation. There is certainly truth to that. What the pharmaceutical industry has managed to do is tell us we cannot regulate the pharmaceutical companies. We cannot have Medicare negotiating lower prices with the drug companies. We cannot do that. They have given us all kinds of reasons we cannot do that.

Then they have told us, well, we also cannot do free market competition: No, you cannot have the local druggist going out and purchasing the product at the best price that he can get, maybe in Canada, maybe Europe. You can't do that. You cannot have regulation. You cannot have free market competition.

Then, on top of all of that, what the drug companies have managed to do is get many billions of dollars in corporate welfare, so the taxpayers of this country subsidize the research and development of many of the most important drugs, while the consumers, the American consumers, get no reasonable pricing despite the many billions of dollars that go into research and development that were paid for by them.

The drug companies get it all. That is what they get. At the end of the day, year after year after year, they are one of the most profitable industries in this country. They are very profitable, and elderly people and working people all over this country find it harder and harder to pay for the prescription drugs they desperately need.

Let us stand with the people. Let's defeat the Cochran amendment and pass the Dorgan amendment.

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