Congress is nearly finished with a bill that would add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and increase the role of private insurers in the program. House and Senate negotiators announced over the weekend that they had reached initial agreement on the 400 billion dollar measure. One of the criticisms of the bill is that it does too little to control the cost of presciption drugs. While it does make it easier for generic copies of brand-name drugs to get approval, it leaves in effect the current ban on the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from other industrialized countries. The bill would allow Americans to buy drugs from Canada, but only if the FDA certifies that the drugs are safe... which the FDA has said it won't do. Minnesota Republican Congressman Gil Gutknecht favors the importation of prescription drugs and authored a House bill that would allow importation from 25 countries. He joins us now.