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601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Suite 900, South Building Washington, D.C. 20004-2601 Tel: 202-220-3172 Fax: 202-639-8238
Board of Directors: A. J. (Jim) Norby President
Bill Kadereit Vice President
John Leasher Vice President Secretary/Treasurer
Jane Banfield Joseph R. (Dick) Ciocca Robert Foresta JoAnn Alix-Gagain Chuck Gilbert
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March 9, 2007
The Honorable Thomas R. Carper United States Senate 513 Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Carper:
On behalf of the some 2 million retirees and workers represented by the National Retiree Legislative Network, I am writing to request that you sign on as a co-sponsor of the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug Safety Act of 2007 (S. 242). We believe there should be a bipartisan effort to pass this bill to allow Americans to purchase lower-priced and safe prescription drugs from Canada and other Western industrialized nations.
As Senator Byron Dorgan pointed out in the March 7, 2007 hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Trade, the same drugs, manufactured in the same factory, routinely sell for nearly two times as much in the U.S. as they do in other countries. Americans—especially retirees living on fixed incomes—can no longer afford the high prices on drugs that are maintained through the strangle hold that pharmaceutical companies have on our nation’s consumers.
Now is the time for the U.S. Senate to take action to provide some relief on the high cost of drugs through legalizing the importation of competitively priced and safe products. Americans should not have to continue to endure higher drug prices while the drug industry endeavors to water down or side track S. 242.
I shall look forward to learning from you that you will become a co-sponsor of S. 242 and actively work for its passage.
Sincerely yours,
President, National Retiree Legislative Network |
