With its Monday vote, the U.S. Senate opted to stick with current import restrictions on prescription drugs. The 49-40 vote approved an amendment opposing a measure that would have loosened those restrictions. Now, cheaper drugs can be imported only if the secretary of Health and Human Services first certifies they are safe. But the resistance of said secretary, Mike Leavitt, to such certifications is already well known. Even so, our own Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray voted for the "poison pill" amendment, killing any good the measure could do.
The original import amendment to prescription drug bill 1082 (chief sponsors were Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine), allowed imports from countries with regulatory requirements similar to ours. "American consumers are paying the highest prices in the world for brand-name prescription drugs. We are trying to change that," said Dorgan, who later lamented "the clout that the drug industry has here in Congress."
So our lawmakers continue to pander to Big Pharma while watching Americans pay some of the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs -- in many cases double what Canadians pay, all under the guise of protecting us from counterfeit drugs. Please. Talk about piling insult onto injury. Then again, President Bush has been huffing and puffing, threatening to veto any measure that would allow for the import of prescription drugs.
Of all the spineless, gutless, blatantly money-grubbing moves to make.
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