Fair treatment for U.S. Rx consumers

Despite broad-based support to make it legal for U.S. consumers to buy safe prescription drugs from other countries, bipartisan legislation to do so was defeated during the Senate debate on health care legislation.  The legislation was opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, and kept out of health care reform as part of a special deal that PhRMA cut with the White House last summer.

I’ve always considered what’s known as reimportation of prescription drugs a free-trade issue.  Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers.  If Americans could legally access prescription drugs outside the United States, then drug companies would be forced to re-evaluate their pricing strategies.  The pharmaceutical industry would no longer have free rein to force American consumers to pay more than their fair share of the high cost of research and development, which experts say is 60 to 112 percent more for brand-name prescription drugs than consumers in other countries.

I’ve voted for every reimportation amendment that’s come up since the first on in 2000, and in 2004, I introduced my own reimportation legislation that included safeguards to prohibit counterfeit drugs from entering the system or other practices that would put consumers at risk.  The following year, I combined my bill with one written by Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and what resulted is the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act introduced by Senator Dorgan, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and myself.  Our legislation was offered this month as an amendment during debate on health care reform. 

I’m committed to working for lower-priced drugs for American consumers.  In October, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bipartisan bill I sponsored with Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin to prohibit brand-name and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers from entering into anti-competitive settlements that keep cheaper drugs off the market.  Our bill – the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act (S. 369) responds to pay-for-delay deals that impeded generic drug competition and keep drug costs high.  In 2003, I authored legislation that created the Medicare prescription drug benefit and included an extensive program to help low-income Americans access prescription medicines with little or no cost.  That law also made the most significant reforms to the Hatch-Waxman drug competition law since it took effect in 1984, to speed the process of allowing generic drugs to come to the market, significantly reducing drug prices.

Separately, I’ve conducted oversight of the Food and Drug Administration’s system for inspecting drugs and ingredients for pharmaceuticals manufactured in other countries.  This year and last year, I introduced legislation with the late Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to give the Food and Drug Administration more resources, through inspection fees, to inspect domestic and foreign-made prescription drugs and medical devices.