[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 143 (Sunday, October 11, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2065]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICING

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                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 9, 1998

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring attention to a crisis in 
our nation. Our seniors are dying because they cannot afford the 
medication prescribed to them by their doctors. Either they don't take 
their medicine, or they stop eating in order to save money to fill 
their prescriptions. This is a travesty.
  I am pleased to join my colleagues in supporting the Prescription 
Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, which will allow elderly Americans to 
purchase their prescriptions at a lower and fairer price. Currently, 
many large groups, such as HMOs, insurance companies, and hospitals, 
purchase drugs at a reduced price from the pharmaceutical companies. 
These are known as most favored customers. However, one group that 
makes up about one-third of the drug-buying market is left out of this 
discount--Medicare beneficiaries.
  The Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act will give Medicare 
beneficiaries a drug benefit card that they can use to purchase 
prescription drugs at reduced prices from participating pharmacies. The 
Government Reform and Oversight Committee estimates that seniors will 
be able to receive more than a 40-percent discount. This will be a 
much-needed, in fact, lifesaving, change for our nation's elderly 
citizens.
  The average income for all seniors was $17,000 in 1996. However, that 
number plummets to only $13,000 per year for elderly women, or just 
over $1,000 per month. Many seniors pay at least one-half that amount 
for prescription drugs. It is absurd to charge those individuals who 
can least afford it the highest prices for their needed medication. 
I've heard from seniors in my state that they not only are paying a 
huge amount of their monthly income for prescriptions, but that they 
don't know how they can deal with the prices that continue to rise.
  And our seniors are somewhat lucky in Vermont. There are two programs 
run by the state that give low-income seniors help with paying for 
their prescription drugs. One program, V-HAP, is for very low-income 
seniors who earn too much for Medicaid. This program allows seniors to 
pay just a few dollars a month for their drugs. The other program, 
VScript, has a higher income threshold and gives seniors with chronic 
illnesses a 50-percent discount on their prescriptions. And still, many 
seniors either do not know about these state programs, or they take 
advantage of them and still find it difficult to pay for their drugs, 
even with the 50-percent discount!
  In two recent cases in Vermont, my constituents went to have their 
prescriptions refilled and found that the price had more than doubled 
in less than 2 months with no notice to them. This is ridiculous! One 
of the pharmacists even had the audacity to ridicule one of my 
constituents when she became upset at the huge increase in price and 
wondered how to pay for it.
  Another of my constituents, Katherine Bentley, whose story is 
mentioned in my Vermont report on seniors' drug prices, was unable to 
pay her electric bill because she was paying almost $600 per month--
more than half her income--for her prescription drugs. This forced her 
out of her home and she still cannot afford all of her medication. Our 
seniors deserve to be treated much, much better than this.
  In recent years, many Members of Congress, including myself, have 
advocated having Medicare cover prescription drugs. I still believe 
that this is a fair, solid proposal. However, why should the Federal 
Government take up the cost of this plan when the pharmaceutical 
companies, with annual profits in the billions of dollars, which put 
them on the Forbes 50 list annually, could and should offer the same 
discount to Medicare beneficiaries as they offer to HMOs and insurance 
companies? Who do we side with here? The multi-billion dollar 
pharmaceutical companies or poor, sick, elderly Americans who need 
prescription drugs? It is only fair to allow Medicare beneficiaries 
with their considerable buying power, to get the same discount on their 
drugs as large corporations.
  In addition to allowing seniors to purchase drugs at this reduced 
rate, another solution to providing lower-cost drugs for all Americans, 
including the elderly, is to reinstate the reasonable pricing clause at 
NIH. This provision was repealed in 1995. It directed NIH to take into 
account the cost that a pharmaceutical company would charge future 
customers for a drug before agreeing to issue a cooperative research 
and development agreement (CRADA). I have introduced bipartisan 
legislation, along with Representatives Rohrabacher, Campbell, and 
Patrick Kennedy, to reinstate this provision. The bill is H.R. 3758, 
the Health Care Research and Development and Taxpayer Protection Act.
  Let me detail how important the reasonable pricing clause is. Today, 
drug companies charge whatever they want for drugs. Taxpayers get hit 
twice--once when their tax dollars go to develop these drugs at NIH and 
again when they have to buy the medication.
  Here are some examples of how the taxpayers are gouged by the 
pharmaceutical companies: Taxol, a breast cancer treatment drug, costs 
its manufacturer, Bristol Myers Squibb, $500. Bristol Myers Squibb 
turns around and charges $10,000 for that drug. This drug makes the 
pharmaceutical company $1 million every day. In this decade, two 
million women will be diagnosed with breast cancer--\1/2\ million of 
them will die. They are dying because they do not have $10,000 for 
Taxol, which would save thousands of lives. Levamisole, which was sold 
by Johnson&Johnson as an anti-worm drug for sheep at six cents a pill, 
was found to treat colon cancer. With this discovery, Johnson&Johnson 
began charging $6 a pill, a 100-percent markup. Colorectal cancer 
killed over 50,000 Americans in 1995. Again, seniors are dying because 
they cannot afford these ridiculously expensive drugs to treat their 
cancer.
  I hope that we can pass both pieces of legislation quickly--both the 
seniors drug pricing legislation and the NIH reasonable pricing clause 
legislation--as many of my constituents have urged, so that no more 
seniors are forced out of their homes, or are forced to choose between 
food or medicine. This is disgraceful and we need to give seniors 
access to their medication at a fair price.

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