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Guest Commentary April 20, 2002
Sense of Urgency Needed to Cut Rise in Prescription Drug Costs
The Honorable Debbie Stabenow
There is something wrong when we are involved as taxpayers, as Americans, in funding research for prescription drugs -- which I support -- providing tax credits for research and development for the companies to be able to do incredibly important, lifesaving research. Yet we in the United States of America pay the highest prices of anyone in the world. That is not an exaggeration -- higher than anyone in the world.
If you are uninsured -- and particularly for our seniors who may use 18 different medications in a year; that is the average -- if you are uninsured, if you are someone walking in and paying retail, you pay the most of anyone anywhere in the United States and the world.
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This is extremely troubling. We are not talking about buying something that is optional; we are talking about lifesaving medications. Whether I am talking to my hospital administrators or the Big Three auto companies or small businesses or senior citizens or a family with a disabled child or anyone who is involved in purchasing prescription drugs, I hear the same thing over and over: We have a system that is broken. It is broken. We have to fix it. ...
Whenever we talk about costs, we hear from the companies that in order to lower costs we will lose valuable research. None of us wants to lose research. We support that. We support funding research. We will do that again this year. But the facts do not show us that we have to suffer and lose research in order to lower costs.
We know that among the largest companies, on average, they spend twice as much on advertising and promotion as they do on research. We also know in an average year there will be about 88,000 people working to promote and to advertise prescription drugs and on average 48,000 people involved in research. There are 88,000 people involved in promoting and advertising, 48,000 involved in research.
I think every American knows, just by turning on the television set, that we have seen an explosion in advertising. Unfortunately, what has happened is we have seen that explosion in advertising causing an explosion in our costs of 18 percent to 20 percent a year.
Something is wrong when there are almost twice as many people involved in promoting a drug and advertising a drug as there are people researching new medications. There is also something wrong when we can go across the bridge or through the tunnel to Canada, that is five minutes in Michigan. We can go across the bridge and we can cut our costs in half for American-made, FDA-approved medications.
I have twice taken a group of seniors across the border, going through the Canadian medical society, and then going into the Canadian pharmacies. We have seen dramatic results. ...
In Michigan, Zocor, a drug to reduce cholesterol, costs $109.73 for 50 5-milligram tablets. In Canada, the exact same prescription costs $46.17 -- $109.73 and $46.17. Since we as taxpayers in the United States have helped to subsidize the research -- which I support doing -- I also want to see us get a price break for the tax dollars that are helping to do this.
I also know that tamoxifen, a breast-cancer-treating drug, is available for about $136 in Michigan. When we went to Canada, with breast cancer patients, they got it for $15. There is something wrong with the laws that say our people cannot freely go back and forth -- our hospitals, our businesses -- and get those lower costs.
There is something wrong with a system where small businesses are seeing 25, 30, 35 percent or more increases in their health care premiums. I have had small business people come to me saying they will have to drop their insurance because they cannot afford the premium increases. The majority of that is the cost of prescription drugs.
We have a lot of work to do. There is something wrong in a country as blessed and as wealthy as the United States when there are seniors who got up this morning, sat at the kitchen table, and said: Do I eat today or do I take my medicine? Do I pay the electric bill or do I take my medicine? ...
I simply say it is now time for a sense of urgency. If a child in our family is sick or if we have a parent who needs lifesaving medication and can't afford it, if we have someone in our family who needs an operation, we feel a sense of urgency. We feel a sense of urgency if someone needs nursing home care or if someone needs some other kind of health care.
We need that same kind of sense of urgency when it comes to public policy on health care.
Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from Michigan. The above commentary has been adapted from a speech Sen. Stabenow delivered on the floor of the Senate, April 18, 2002. To contact her, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
