[Pharm-policy] Sanders Amendment on reasonable pricing passes house with 313 yes vote

[James Love]

This is a very important development.  Jamie

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Subject: House NIH Licensing Amendment
   Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:47:33 -0400
  From: "Heuer, Tate" <Tate.Heuer@mail.house.gov>
 
http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2000&rollnumber=268

Last night the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Sanders
Amendment as a rider to an appropriations bill.  The amendment would require
pharmaceutical manufacturers that are making new products involving
exclusive licenses from NIH to sign reasonable pricing agreements.  The
amendment was supported by all but 14 Democrats and a majority of
Republicans.  (I believe it was in the 103rd Congress that a similar Sanders
amendment failed.)

- Tate

June 14, 2000           

Dow Jones Newswires US House OKs Measure Requiring `Reasonable Drug Prices' 
Dow Jones Newswires 

WASHINGTON -- Democrats successfully led a charge Tuesday night to attach
313-109 a provision to a federal spending bill that would require drug
companies to offer medicine they developed from federally funded research at
"a reasonable price." The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Bernard Sanders,
I-Vt., would require the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ensure that
drug companies offer their products at a "reasonable price" if the drug was
developed at taxpayer expense. "A number of the most profitable drugs on the
market were originally developed with taxpayer-funded research, including
AZT (for AIDS), Taxol (for cancer), Prozac (for clinical depression) and
Capoten (for hypertension)," said a statement released by Sanders' office.
The Democratic-backed legislation, which drew more than 115 Republicans, was
attached to an appropriations bill that funds the Labor, Health and Human
Services and Education departments. Both Democrats and Republicans are
looking for ways in an election year to tame skyrocketing drug prices and
provide affordable prescription drugs to the elderly. Lawmakers from both
parties argued on the House floor Tuesday that it was only right that drug
makers return savings back to U.S. citizens when they profit from
taxpayer-funded drug research. Lawmakers touted Eli Lilly's (LLY) depression
blockbuster drug Prozac as well as cancer drug Taxol and hypertension
reducer Capoten, both made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Corp. (BMY), as drugs
that have benefited from research done by the NIH. In addition, lawmakers
complained that U.S. drug companies take that federal research and give
discounted prices on those medicines to foreign countries while charging far
higher prices for prescription drugs in the U.S. Industry trade group, the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, has protested those
assertions and maintains that the present drug development system in the
U.S. works to everyone's benefit. -By Dawn Kopecki; 202-862-6637
(dawn.kopecki@dowjones.com)     


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James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
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