Prescription drug prices are a travesty. I know that personally. My late husband, Jon, paid $500 for a two-week supply of his cancer drug. And that isn’t the whole story. Medicare paid the remaining $9,500 for those 14 pills. We and Medicare (i.e., taxpayers) were shellacked.

Now, Sens. Susan Collins and Chuck Grassley are co-sponsoring, with 10 others, a bill to import cheaper drugs from Canada. I can’t help but think we’d be in a better place if these two senators, and nearly every Republican in Congress, hadn’t signed a pact with the devil (Big Pharma) by voting for the 2003 law to give seniors prescription drug coverage, just what President George W. Bush needed to be re-elected.

What’s relevant today is that that bill prohibited negotiating with drug companies for lower prices, and importing cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere. “Pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill,” a Republican told “60 Minutes” afterward. Big Pharma has held us captive since then.

How many people suffered and/or died in nearly 20 years? How many parents have struggled to find medications for their suffering children? Mary Ann Cumming (“Letter to the editor: Mainers deserve access to lower-cost medications”) and Sabrina Burbeck (“Commentary: Making health care work for Maine families like mine”) wrote, on May 4, about the effects of high prices.

Actions have consequences. For shame!

I mention Collins and Grassley because they are the only two people who voted for the 2003 law who are still in office and are sponsoring the Canadian drug import bill now.

Donna Halvorsen
South Portland