[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 11 (Friday, January 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  AUCTION OF SATELLITE SLOT BRINGS IN MILLIONS FOR AMERICAN TAXPAYERS

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that today's New 
York times article entitled, ``News Corp. and MCI Win Satellite Slot'' 
be printed in the Record. The sale of this national resource is a 
windfall for American taxpayers. Many thought it would only bring in 
$20 million to $100 million. But the experts were wrong. It brought in 
a whopping $682.5 million. Senator McCain and Senator Brown deserve 
recognition, and our thanks, for pushing through the legislation that 
made this auction possible.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 26, 1995]

                 News Corp. and MCI Win Satellite Slot


                Bid of $682 Million to Beam TV to Homes

                         (By Edmund L. Andrews)

       Washington, January 25.--After a brief but spirited bidding 
     war, MIC Communications and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation 
     agreed today to pay the Federal Government $682 million for 
     the last unclaimed orbital slot for a satellite that can beam 
     television straight to individual homes across the United 
     States.
       The two companies, which have formed a joint venture to 
     build and operate the system, said they planned to invest 
     another $1 billion and hoped to begin offering both 
     television and a broad range of business communication 
     services within two years.
       ``We are talking about much, much more than higher quality 
     television,'' said Bert C. Roberts, the chairman and chief 
     executive of MCI, in a satellite-linked news conference with 
     Mr. Murdoch.
       But some analysts remain skeptical about the idea. MCI and 
     the News Corporation paid top dollar for the license, more 
     than twice that Tele-Communications Inc. of Denver was 
     willing to pay when it dropped out of the Federal 
     Communications Commission's auction on Wednesday.
       The two companies will also be years behind several rivals, 
     all of which either can or will beam more than 150 channels 
     of television to relatively small antennas.
       ``I'm scratching my head, trying to figure out where they 
     are going,'' said Daniel P. Reingold, a telecommunications 
     analyst with Merrill Lynch.
       DirectTV, a subsidiary of General Motors' Hughes 
     Electronics, has signed up 1.2 million subscribers who 
     receive service over antennas about 18 inches in diameter. 
     And its pace is likely to speed up because the AT&T 
     Corporation bought a small stake in the company this week and 
     plans to start marketing its service through the AT&T sales 
     force.
       Echostar Communications of Englewood, Colo., which lost out 
     to MCI in today's auction, already owns another direct-
     broadcast license and has launched its first satellite. It 
     hopes to beam about 75 channels of television in March and to 
     double that capacity with a second satellite by the end of 
     the year.
       And Primestar Partners, a consortium owned by several of 
     the country's biggest cable television companies, is 
     marketing a similar service that customers receive on bulkier 
     three-foot-wide satellite dishes.
       Today, however, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Murdoch radiated 
     confidence and said they had much more in mind than simply 
     emulating traditional cable television. Mr. Roberts described 
     beaming things like medical images between hospitals, video 
     training materials for corporations and high-speed data links 
     to connect far-flung offices of a company.
       Winning this license will allow MCI and the News 
     Corporation to embark on the first tangible project of the 
     alliance they formed nearly a year ago, in which MCI paid $2 
     billion for a 13.5 percent stake in News Corporation.
       As the nation's second-largest long-distance carrier, MCI 
     has been struggling to move beyond its traditional business 
     and match moves made by both AT&T and the Sprint Corporation.
       Sprint, meanwhile, has teamed up with four of the country's 
     biggest cable companies in a bid to offer a full range of 
     telephone, cable television and wireless communication 
     services.
       The new satellite license will allow the two companies to 
     beam more than 200 channels of television programming over 
     direct-broadcast satellites, high-powered satellites whose 
     signals can be received by pizza-sized 18-inch dishes in 
     individual homes.
       Under the new joint venture, MCI said it would take lead 
     responsibility for developing business communication services 
     and the News Corporation would take the lead on consumer 
     services. Mr. Murdoch said the consumer business would focus 
     primarily on competing with traditional cable television 
     operators.
       Mr. Murdoch has already been both shrewd and highly 
     successful in the satellite television business overseas. In 
     Europe, the News Corporation owns a 40 percent in B Sky B, a 
     service that now has five million subscribers. And in Asia, 
     the News Corporation owns Star TV, which beams television and 
     radio over Japan, Korea, China and India.
       MCI, despite its difficulties in branching beyond the long-
     distance market, has nevertheless repeatedly shown itself a 
     master of marketing prowess that has generally outpaced both 
     AT&T and Sprint in the long-distance arena.
       David Roddy, a communications analysts with Deloitte & 
     Touche Consulting Group, said MCI had particular need for 
     obtaining the last unclaimed satellite spot for direct-
     broadcast television because it had no other way of 
     distributing entertainment and other forms of media.
       ``A lot of people are asking whether MCI can afford to do 
     this, but my answer is, can they afford not to do it?'' Mr. 
     Roddy said.


                  Medicare Reimbursement for Tamoxifen

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, each year in this country approximately 
180,000 women are diagnosed as having breast cancer, a terrible disease 
that will claim nearly 50,000 lives. But, nearly 2.6 million women are 
breast cancer survivors, in part because of the availability of 
Tamoxifen citrate, a widely used post-operative drug for this disease.
  My colleagues may not be aware that a low-cost version of Tamoxifen 
is available on the market today. As a result, the estimated 800,000 
women who take two tablets per day of this lower cost medicine are 
saving a total of $81 million a year.
  It has not been widely publicized, but during consideration of the 
Balanced Budget Act, a provision was included in the now-vetoed 
conference report to amend the Medicare Program to include 
reimbursement for Tamoxifen. In an effort to lessen the cost of this 
expansion of Medicare reimbursement, a rebate was included to reduce 
the cost of the drug to the Federal Government when covered as part of 
Medicare.
  Unfortunately, I believe my colleagues were unaware of the negative 
effects of this rebate provision when it was passed as part of the 
budget bill. One notable drawback is that the provision would have set 
the very undesirable precedent of establishing a Medicare rebate. Such 
a rebate would be unwise policy for a number of reasons, but that is 
not the focus of my remarks here today.
  More importantly, as a result of this new and unprecedented Medicare 
rebate, the provider of the low-cost alternative of Tamoxifen would no 
longer be able to make this product available in the domestic market. 
That is because the rebate, combined with the terms of a contract 
negotiated between the lower cost provider and the drug innovator, 
would cause the lower cost provider to lose money on each bottle of 
Tamoxifen sold.
  Ironically, for Medicare beneficiaries and other consumers, the 
result of what I believe was a well-intentioned amendment could only be 
higher prices for this life-saving breast cancer therapy. Such a result 
would indeed be tragic, and I hope that my colleagues will give this a 
second thought as future Medicare bills are developed.

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