RENO - U.S. Senate candidate Ed Bernstein on Thursday called for federal legislation to dramatically cut prescription drug prices.
Speaking outside the Reno headquarters of Merck, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, he said because of U.S. laws, customers here pay two or three times as much for the same drugs as those in Canada and Mexico.
He said those most hurt are seniors who often need several expensive medicines and must pay for them on a fixed income.
"The most profitable industry in the nation is charging the highest prices in the world to those who can least afford it," he said.
He said the situation is especially galling because U.S. tax dollars helped pay for the research that developed many of those very drugs.
Bernstein held the press conference outside Merck's Reno facility near the airport, saying that company's cholesterol drug Zocor is a perfect example. It costs $44 in Mexico and $47 in Canada but $98 for the same bottle of pills in Reno.
He promised to work for "an end to price discrimination in America.
"We need to take care of our own seniors here."
Bernstein, the Democratic candidate for Senate, said Gov. Kenny Guinn and the Legislature tried to give seniors some help by creating an insurance policy to cover drugs but that no insurance company will offer the coverage for $40 a month so that the program is stalled.
"I'm not surprised," he said adding that the program won't work because drug costs are so high insurance firms can't offer reasonably priced coverage. "We're not going to help seniors or all Americans until we reduce the price of prescription drugs."
He said that can be done by repealing the law that allows them to charge more in America than other countries, adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and allowing Social Security and everyone else to get the same bulk rates for drugs as HMOs pay - often 50 percent less.
He said those reforms have been proposed before but that too many members of Congress are "in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies." He urged people to check who is receiving contributions from those companies, which he said spend $74 million a year to lobby Congress.
Bernstein said forcing the prices of those drugs down will not only help seniors pay for critically needed medicines but cut the cost to taxpayers of providing prescriptions to Medicare recipients in the future.
He said the state plan just isn't working and that isn't the place where the fix must come from.
"It's a national problem," said Bernstein. "First we have to have a national solution."
He said changes will come when people elect candidates such as himself who won't take pharmaceutical contributions.
"A great majority of this money is going to Republican leadership and Republican candidates," he said.