The Minnesota Senior Federation is leading a national Campaign for Affordable Prescription Drugs. It is composed of non-profit Senior Citizen Consumer Organizations and allies from Main to California.

While the Senior Federation and our allied organizations all desire Medicare to provide strong prescription drug coverage, we are also of the belief that unless the extraordinary high costs of prescription drugs are curtailed, neither Medicare nor our country can afford decent and affordable benefits. Current estimates for the cost Medicare Prescription Drug Act are now between $724 billion and $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. Unless significant steps are taken to control the cost of drugs not only Medicare but the entire U.S. health care system is likely to collapse. In the next 8 years, health care costs are expected to consume 25% of America’s GDP and prescription drugs alone will consume over 4%. 

In simple terms, we believe there are only two ways to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

1. Direct negotiations by an agency of our government.
This is the way most countries have dealt with balancing the need for affordable prescription drugs and the pharmaceutical industry's honest need to provide for research and development of needed, new medications. In fact when our country negotiates as it does for the military, or the federal prison system, we negotiate prices that are similar to prices in many other counties: approximately 45% lower than what prescription drugs normally sell for in the U.S. for the uninsured.

Neither Congress nor this administration have the will to negotiate lower prices on behalf of not only older Americans but all U.S. Citizens. So the only viable option may be:

2. The Power of International Markets to bring about lower costs for all Americans
Under this plan we would unleash international market forces to bring down the cost of prescription drugs by allowing individuals and in some proposals American pharmacies and wholesalers to buy FDA approved drugs from Canada and other countries that have similar oversight and protections as we have in this country.

We believe this option has a strong chance of passage, because it brings together liberals (most of whom have always advocated for significant drug coverage and price restraints) with honest fiscal conservatives who firmly believe in the power of international free trade to work for all Americans.