U.S. senator slams ‘parasitic’ Canada over drug prices

*Not to worry, Canada. This man is insane.*

An American legislator called Canada “parasitic” on Wednesday for siphoning U.S. dollars to Canada with low prescription drug prices while his country does “all the innovation.”

Canada benefits financially from America’s role as a world leader in medical advances, Republican Senator Bob Corker charged in an exchange with a Liberal MP as she testified before a U.S. Senate committee.

“One of the things that has troubled me greatly about our system is the fact that we pay more for pharmaceuticals and devices than other countries, and yet it’s not really our country so much that’s the problem, it’s the parasitic relationship that Canada and France and other countries have towards us,” the Tennessee lawmaker told Carolyn Bennett.

“Meaning that you set prices and unfortunately all the innovation, all the technological breakthroughs, just about, take place in our country .… You benefit from us, and we pay for that, and I resent that.”

Bennett, a family doctor and one-time minister of state for public health, was one of five people testifying before the Senate special committee on aging. The panel, chaired by Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl and including newly minted Sen. Al Franken, was examining how successful health-care systems keep their costs low while maintaining quality care.

She seemed puzzled by Corker’s remarks, reminding him that drug pricing was a global concern, not part of a plot by Canada.

“It’s the drug companies, sir, and they’re multinational — it’s nothing about the United States of America,” she told him.

Their debate comes as U.S. Democratic senator Byron Dorgan from North Dakota is preparing to make a legislative push in the days to come that would legally allow Americans to buy cheaper Canadian drugs.

Dorgan will introduce an amendment to the health-care reform legislation currently before the Senate finance committee that would legalize so-called re-importation. Under current U.S. law, only pharmaceutical companies are allowed to import prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration into the United States.

Drug companies import more than US $40 billion in drugs into the United States, while drug wholesalers and consumers are shut out of the global marketplace. Consequently, Dorgan has long maintained, Americans pay higher prices for prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world.

News of the pending amendment, to be introduced when the health-care reform bill makes it to the Senate floor, has alarmed some Canadian observers who fear re-importation could lead to shortage of drugs in Canada.

Bennett herself raised that concern in her testimony on Wednesday.

“Please don’t think that you can import cheap drugs from Canada … it will last us about 36 days,” she told Corker.

He replied: “That’s a silly way of dealing with it.”

“My goal over time is for us not to pay more than you, because you set prices and cause us to pay more when we’re doing all the innovation,” Corker added.

“In essence, the Canadian government and its citizens are taking advantage of our citizens by virtue of setting prices that are lower than competitive prices.”

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/01/parasitic-canada-drugs.html?ref=rss#socialcomments

In Effect, There Is Virtually No Candidate

The inside information is, contrary to anything different that only foolish people might believe, both putative Presidential candidates are now doing nothing as much as losing the general election. The voters are panicked by the state of the economy, on which neither of the two has a clue, or is likely to ever discover a clue.

Unless Vice-President Cheney can start World War III very soon, in which case neither Obama or McCain would ever be President. The situation right now, is that the election could be called off, while the nation operates under an unelected “emergency government,” for the duration of the presently onrushing global, economic breakdown-crisis.

The only leading issue on the electorate’s mind is the plunging state of the U.S. and European economies, which means that Obama’s constituency as November approaches, will be, basically, the serried ranks of some Buppies and Boomers, that is, if the chain is not pulled on Obama, as has been expected, by some time during September-October.

Meanwhile, Senator McCain’s virtual breakdown in accepting the Governor of Alaska as a stand-in for the Senator Lieberman whom he really wanted, combined with the effect of several factors on the Obama candidacy, means, that, as of this moment, it is probable that neither will be a standing candidate come November. Gustav came as a welcome excuse for many Republicans’ non- attendance at this week’s opening of the nominating convention. Of course, nothing is certain, except chaos, unless we become lucky and get an option I would prefer.

British thuggery pushed Hillary out, but it also wrecked the Democratic Party’s likelihood of winning the election.

The problem is not limited to the intellctual incompetence of the two Presidential candidates. In effect, letting the British (e.g., Rohatyn, Soros) steer muddleheaded Nancy Pelosi into virtually shutting down the U.S. Congress for most of the past two years, and eliminating the only leading pre-Presidential candidate who has shown the ability to think like an actual President, the U.S.A. does not have the prospect of an actually functioning, properly elected President assuming office come January.

It is the reigning Federal political system, in the Executive Branch, and the leadership of both branches of the Federal legislature, together with the leading press, which are responsible for the general breakdown of the Federal political system at this time.

I am not proposing that that will be the situation come November election-day. In a situation like the present global financial and strategic crisis, the candidates nominated by the time the Republican conventions ends, may not be candidates when election-day arrives. Past Labor Day, the fact of the incompetence of the present top leaders in the Congress, the candidates, and the major press, will have begun to kick in.

You can nominate a zero, but no sane person would ever believe for long, that it was actually our President. So, Gustav saved many leading Republicans from disgusting themselves by attending the Republican nominating convention. As things stand now, the name of the next President of the U.S.A. might turn out to have been “None of the Above.”

As usual, when I am abroad for a few weeks, there has been a bit of an emotional breakdown in places such as Leesburg. Don’t let that discourage you; it happens regularly, and we have always survived such fits by the usual suspects before. In the meantime, we shall continue to do our job, and pay little attention to the perenniel gaggle of silly gossips.

Many things are about to change, and that more or less profoundly, very, very soon.

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/09/02/effect-there-virtually-no-candidate.html