Are Drug Research Costs Escalating, or Not?
Kucinich gave the following speech in Congress on June 30, 2005
Speaking in support of the Brown amendment to H.R. 3058, the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006, Congressman Kucinich said:
"Mr. Chairman, is the administration manipulating information to benefit the pharmaceutical industry? Is the economic report of the President? And in that economic report, the administration parrots Big Pharmaceuticals' claims that drug prices need to be so high because of the costs of continuing to develop innovative life-saving drugs.
"But this assumption is directly at odds with the assumption the administration made in its cost estimate of the new Medicare drug benefit. CMS assumed that escalating drug costs would slow because drug companies will be churning out fewer innovative drugs. Which is it?
"If the drug industry is spending big on the next generation of innovative drugs, then projected costs of the Medicare drug benefit will be higher than the administration estimates. Then again, if the drug industry is not, in fact, spending big on innovative research, then the high prices charged by Big PhRMA amount to price gouging, plain and simple. I urge support for the Brown amendment."
Amendment offered by Mr. Brown of Ohio:
At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following:
"Sec. __. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Council of Economic Advisers to produce an Economic Report of the President regarding the average cost of developing and introducing a new prescription drug to the market at $800 million or more."
[Ed. note: The Brown amendment failed by recorded vote: 141 - 284 (Roll No. 355).]
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