With it clear that the U.S. Senate had the votes to finally legalize the reimportation of drugs from Canada, some sneaky Senators were able to add provisions to Sen. Byron Dorgan’s amendment that essentially nullify its impact.
Though he shouldn’t have been surprised, Dorgan (D-ND) expressed disappointment in the outcome:
We’re going to keep fighting. One day, I assure you, we are going to inject a little price competition into the American market when it comes to prescription medicines. Without competition, the big drug companies monopoly price their medicines and Americans pay the highest prices in the world…
We could have voted to help improve the lives of millions of Americans, make prescription drugs more safe, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, save $50 billion over ten years through something we all say we believe in — market competition.
This fight is not over. We’ll be back. And eventually, the American people are going to win.
Here’s more reaction from PharmaGossip, Merrill Goozner, Peter Rost, Into My Own, Green Fertility, Later On, the Daily Kos, and the AARP.
And for a through-the-looking-glass take on this triumph of Big Pharma lobbying, check out this dreck.
[...] How much does a Senate vote cost? Oh, about $19 million As a final sad note on the U.S. Senate vote this week on Canadian drug reimportation, here’s an analysis by David Sirota: These people still haven’t answered the very simple question Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) asked in 2005: “Why allow bad beef to enter the U.S. from Canada and not allow safe medicine?” [...]