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PUBLIC LIVES

PUBLIC LIVES; Independent No Longer Alone in Fight Over Drug Costs

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April 10, 2000, Section A, Page 10Buy Reprints
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THE pharmaceutical industry has a lot of problems in Washington these days, its prices and profits proving an irresistible target for politicians with hard-pressed elderly constituents and an election on the horizon.

But there are few more persistent irritants than Representative Bernard Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont who is one of two independents in the House. Mr. Sanders, a gruff-spoken 58-year-old native of Flatbush, with a thatch of white hair and a rumpled 60's-academic style, has twice taken elderly constituents on well-publicized trips to Canada to buy prescription drugs, highlighting the lower prices across the border.

He has pushed legislation that he said would allow American pharmacists and distributors to ''reimport'' prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from Canada and Mexico and sell them at lower costs.

When a lobbying alliance backed by the pharmaceutical industry set up a Web site to highlight the problems in the Canadian health care system (www.busfromcanada.org), Mr. Sanders quickly countered with a Web site about the inequities of American drug pricing and the legislative proposals to deal with them (bernie.house.gov/bustocanada).

In an interview on Thursday night, Mr. Sanders had the quiet glow of a man who believed that political lightning was finally striking his cause.

''You're dealing here not just with an economic issue or even a health care issue, you're dealing with a very profound moral issue,'' he said. ''Time is long overdue for the Congress to stand up to these people and protect the American people.''

Jackie Cottrell, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, responded, ''What's moral is to make sure medicines are available through insurance coverage, but also to make sure that Congressman Sanders and his allies don't stifle our ability to invent medicines that help and heal.''

Mr. Sanders has focused on this issue since the 1980's when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vt., and created a task force on health care. Medicare, the health program for the elderly, generally does not cover outpatient prescription drugs, and a third of its elderly beneficiaries have no drug coverage at all. ''You can't walk down a main street in Vermont without someone coming up and saying, 'Bernie, you've got to do something about the high cost of prescription drugs,' '' he said.

T HESE days, of course, nearly everyone says he wants to do something to help the elderly with drug costs, but Mr. Sanders stands out. He believes not only in new prescription drug coverage for the elderly, and not only in finding a way to end what he considers price discrimination against American consumers, but in a publicly financed national health insurance program -- a Canadian-style system, administered by the states -- for everyone.

He does not seem to worry much about the drug industry's arguments that its prices in the United States are necessary to cover the cost of research. He said he met with some industry lobbyists last year and remembers that they were wearing ''fancy shoes.'' He spoke not with irony but -- to use his word -- with ''contempt.''

In an age of careful centrism, there is an archaic quality to Mr. Sanders' political speech, not to mention a razor's edge.

''I know what it's like to live in a family without any money,'' he said, ''the economic suffering that is totally unnecessary'' among the uninsured, the working poor and many of the elderly. His father, who emigrated from Poland at the age of 17, was a paint salesman. ''He worked very hard. He never made a lot of money,'' Mr. Sanders said in a quick staccato, his eyes focused on the floor. ''Lack of money was a constant stress on my parents' relationship and in our household.''

Mr. Sanders' only sibling, a brother, became a social worker. Mr. Sanders himself, after a year at Brooklyn College, went to the University of Chicago on a combination of loans, grants and part-time jobs. He was a lackluster student, he wrote in his autobiography, but ''learned a lot more from my out-of-class activities'' in groups like the Congress of Racial Equality and the Young People's Socialist League.

He moved to Vermont in the late 1960's, working at a mixture of state government, carpentry and writing jobs, and ultimately ended up in politics. Initially, he had little success, but he was elected mayor of Burlington from 1981 to 1989, and in 1990 won Vermont's only House seat, the first independent elected to Congress in 40 years. Mr. Sanders has four children, and his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, has been a key adviser in his political career.

While he tends to align with the Democrats, he said he never considered becoming one. Why?

''Both major political parties are heavily influenced by big money,'' he said. He noted that in nine years in Congress, he has spent one weekend in Washington. He talked scornfully of the journalists and the politicians who spend their time talking to one another, with ''no sense of what's going on in the real world.''

Mr. Sanders clearly feels he has the drug industry on the defensive. ''What I try to do here is not to be an ideologue, but to talk issues,'' he said. ''And when you talk issues, people respond positively.'' Still, he acknowledges, ''I sometimes scratch my head that somebody like me ever made it to the U.S. Congress.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the National edition with the headline: PUBLIC LIVES; Independent No Longer Alone in Fight Over Drug Costs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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