[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 74 (Thursday, May 20, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H3440-H3441]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        ON H.R. 644, PRESCRIPTION DRUG FAIRNESS FOR SENIORS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to put an end to a national 
disgrace. Plainly speaking, I am talking about price gouging, price 
gouging some of the most vulnerable members of our community, our 
seniors.
  Americans widely support programs to ensure the health and welfare of 
older Americans. We have Social Security, we have Medicare, as well as 
housing programs, nutrition programs and programs that really protect 
our low-income seniors. Seniors today have less fear of being taken 
advantage of because of consumer laws and senior abuse laws that 
protect them. But there is one area where we clearly have failed, and 
that is to ensure that prescription drugs are affordable, affordable to 
the people who need them the most, our seniors.
  The latest surveys indicate that 86 percent of Medicare beneficiaries 
take prescription drugs and that the elderly in the United States, who 
make up only 12 percent of our population, use one-third of the 
prescription drugs sold in this Nation. The need for prescription drugs 
to treat such diseases as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, 
heart disease, is simply a fact of life for seniors, or a fact of 
death. A few years ago, a survey of seniors reported that 13 percent of 
older Americans had to choose between eating or buying medicine.
  In Sonoma and Marin Counties, the district I represent, the two 
counties north of the Golden Gate bridge, two individuals that I have 
come to know, Roy and Ivera Cobbs of Sebastopol, have had to make some 
very difficult decisions around their prescription drugs. What they 
decided was, she would take her prescription drugs and he would not 
because they could not afford both. That is not the way we are supposed 
to be treating our seniors.
  Also in Sonoma and Marin County, the area Agencies on Aging and Green 
Thumb have told me some other stories. They tell me about cases where 
seniors just do not buy food because they have to have prescription 
drugs, or they take part of their prescription every other day instead 
of every day or once a day instead of twice a day, as prescribed by 
their doctors, because they cannot afford to pay for the whole dosage. 
And for the reason some seniors cannot pay for them keeps our seniors 
from having the best health care they can. This reason, I believe, is 
solely on the shoulders of the Nation's largest drug companies, because 
they engage in discriminatory pricing. If you are a favored customer, 
like an HMO, like a large insurance company, you pay less, much less 
for prescription drugs. But if you are an older person, on Medicare, 
you pay a premium price for your drugs.

[[Page H3441]]

  In the district I represent, Sonoma County seniors pay on the average 
of 145 percent more for the most commonly used drugs than favored 
customers pay for the same drugs. For one drug, they pay 242 percent 
more than favored customers. I know this, because I asked the minority 
staff of the Committee on Government Reform to look into prescription 
drug pricing in Sonoma and Marin Counties. I released the results to 
that report to my community and its central conclusion can be summed up 
in the report subtitle, Drug Companies Profit at the Expense of Older 
Americans. As Members can see by these charts, for Sonoma County alone, 
the study looked into five commonly used prescription drugs, charted 
their price at local pharmacies and compared those prices to what the 
Federal Government pays for the same drugs. The Federal negotiated 
price is nearly the same, you must know, as that charged to favored 
private customers, large insurance companies and HMOs. Senior citizens 
and other individuals who pay for their own drugs pay more than twice 
as much for these drugs than do the drug companies' most favored 
customers. For some drugs listed in the report, the price is even more 
outrageous. Synthroid, for example, a hormone treatment, costs Sonoma 
County seniors 1,738 percent more than it cost the manufacturer's 
favored customers. By looking at these charts, we can see that for 
Medicare patients, those who need the cholesterol drug Zocor, their 
costs are significantly greater than the favored customers. This comes 
out to $115 for Medicare patients and $34 for the favored customers. 
That is 231 percent different. The difference is not in price because 
the HMOs, the large insurance companies and government buyers are able 
to negotiate and buy in bulk. The difference is because they are 
charging seniors to make up the difference for what they cut for their 
most favored customers.

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