[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 144 (Thursday, October 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12970-S12972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PRESCRIPTION DRUG COVERAGE UNDER MEDICARE

  Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for yielding the 
floor. I know he waited a long time yesterday to speak, and I have 
waited as well. I thank the Senator for his courtesy.
  I take the opportunity for a few minutes this afternoon to talk about 
an issue of enormous importance to millions of older people and their 
families. Specifically, it is the question of including prescription 
drug coverage under Medicare for the Nation's older people.
  There is one, just one, bipartisan bill before the Senate to offer 
this vital coverage to the Nation's elderly. I have teamed up on this 
bill with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine because the two of us believe 
it is critical that the Congress address this issue now and address it 
on a bipartisan basis. So Senator Snowe and I, in an effort to get this 
issue out of the beltway, beyond Washington, DC, as you can see in the 
poster next to me, are urging that seniors send in copies of their 
prescription drug bills. Just as this poster says, send copies of their 
prescription drug bills to their Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 
20510.
  What we are going to do, in an effort to get bipartisan support for 
our legislation, is come to the floor every few days--this is the 
fourth time I have come to the floor of the Senate--and

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read directly from letters we are receiving from the Nation's elderly 
people. Here is one I just received yesterday from an elderly person in 
Central Point, OR. She wrote:

       Dear Senator Wyden, I write to ask for your support for 
     Medicare coverage of prescription medicine. In my case such 
     coverage is a financial necessity. I suffer from rheumatoid 
     arthritis. My physician recommends that I use medicine to 
     combat it. The only problem I have is that the dosage I 
     require would require an annual outlay in excess of $1,000 
     a month. I desperately wish I could have the relief Enbrel 
     could give me. Please champion coverage.

  Another letter I received from my home community, from an elderly 
widow, states that her Social Security is $1,179 a month. Each month, 
from that $1,179 check, she spends $179 on the medicine Fosamax, $209 a 
month on Prilosec, $112 on Lescol; that is $500 a month, each month, 
for her prescription medicine from her monthly Social Security check, 
which is the only income she has. Almost half of her income goes to pay 
for her prescription drug bills.
  Here is a letter I have just received from King City, OR. The writer 
says:

       I am a constant user of Lovenox inhaler. Two uses per day 
     come to $839. Fortunately, I drove a Chevrolet when my 
     friends were driving Cadillacs, and our family vacation was 
     spent in the U.S. not the South Seas, so I may be able to 
     carry the load at least for a while. My annual cost for this 
     one medicine is $30,600, just about what it would equal to 
     stay in a nursing home.

  These are just a few of the bills that are coming into my office, 
coming into Senator Snowe's office, and our colleagues' here in the 
Senate as a result of the concern among the Nation's senior citizens 
that this issue be addressed. I hope we will see that more senior 
citizens follow just as we say in this poster: ``Send in your 
prescription drug bills.''
  The Snowe-Wyden legislation is bipartisan. It uses market forces to 
hold down the cost of medicine. That is the biggest problem, holding 
down the enormous cost of these medicines. More than 20 percent of the 
Nation's senior citizens spend over $1,000 a year out of pocket on 
their prescription medicine, and the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill would 
use a market-oriented approach to address this issue. It is modeled on 
the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan. Our view is, if health care 
is good enough for Members of Congress, we certainly ought to look at 
using that kind of approach for the Nation's seniors. We call it the 
SPICE bill, the Senior Prescription Insurance Coverage Equity Act, 
because we would cover all of the Nation's older people eligible for 
Medicare. It is absolutely key that we do this now.
  When people ask, ``Can we afford to cover prescription drugs under 
Medicare?'' my response is: ``We cannot afford not to cover 
prescriptions any longer.'' The reason for that--and I know my 
colleague currently in the Chair was involved in aging issues when he 
was in the House and was involved with Social Security, so he is 
familiar with this. We know the most important drugs that would be 
covered under the Snowe-Wyden legislation are preventive drugs. They 
help to deal with blood pressure problems and cholesterol problems. 
They keep people healthy and well, and they keep them fit. That helps 
hold down the cost for what is called Medicare Part A, the acute care 
portion of Medicare that covers hospitals and institutional services. 
Under the Snowe-Wyden approach, we contain costs without shifting them 
onto the backs of somebody else.
  One of the things that concerns me, there is a well-meaning bill that 
has been introduced that suggests we ought to have Medicare buy up all 
the drugs and act as a buyer for everybody. The problem with that 
approach is that it will result in tremendous cost-shifting onto the 
backs of other Americans who are having difficulty paying for their 
prescription drug bills. I don't want to see a 27-year-old divorced 
African American woman with two kids, who is working hard, playing by 
the rules and doing everything she can to get ahead, have to see a big 
increase in her prescription drug bill because the costs are shifted 
onto her when somebody doesn't think about the implications of trying 
to do this through approaches that don't involve marketplace forces.
  So these are letters I am receiving from seniors across the country. 
Here is another one from Myrtle Creek, OR. This is a senior citizen who 
has to take a variety of medicines, including Albuterol, Dulcolax, and 
other drugs. She writes me that she spent $370 recently on prescription 
drugs from a Social Security check of $1,152. She went to a small 
drugstore in Myrtle Creek, OR--a terrific small community--and spent 
$370 from a Social Security check of $1,152 on her medicines.

  I think a lot of these seniors are asking themselves, what is it that 
the Senate is so busy doing that it cannot work in a bipartisan way to 
be responsive to older people and families on this issue? I am very 
hopeful that if seniors just read what it says in this poster: ``Send 
in your prescription drug bills'' to Senators--Senator Snowe and I are 
particularly interested in hearing from older people because we want to 
do this in a bipartisan way. A lot of people think the prescription 
drug issue is just going to be fodder for the campaign in the year 2000 
and in the fall of 2000 we will just have the Democrats and Republicans 
slugging it out on the issue. The last time I looked, it was more than 
a year until that election comes up.
  I don't want to see seniors such as the ones I am hearing from in 
Myrtle Creek and King City, and all over the Willamette Valley in my 
home State--I don't want to see them suffer. I know the Chair doesn't 
want to see people suffer in Kentucky. Other colleagues feel the same 
way. If we can put down the partisanship for a little while and work 
together in an effort to get the vulnerable seniors across this country 
the coverage they need, we will have a truly lasting legacy from this 
session of the Senate.
  I was codirector of the Gray Panthers, a great senior citizens group, 
for about 7 years before I was elected to the Congress. Some of my most 
joyous memories are working with older people back then. We talked 
about how important it was to cover prescriptions.
  Well, what has happened with the evolution of the pharmaceutical 
sector over those 20 years is, prescription drugs have become even more 
important since those days when I was codirector of the Gray Panthers; 
the drugs are even more important now because they do so much to 
promote wellness. We needed them before because you do need medications 
for so many who are acutely ill. But today, this could result in 
keeping people healthy and save Medicare, particularly the 
institutional part of the program, Part A, that it could save Medicare 
Part A money and we could do it through marketplace forces.
  Snowe-Wyden doesn't go out and set up a price control regime. We give 
senior citizens the kind of bargaining power a health maintenance 
organization would have through the marketplace. Seniors would get to 
choose the various kinds of coverages that are available to Members of 
Congress, such as the President of the Senate and myself. It would not 
be bureaucratic. We know our health care doesn't create a whole lot of 
new redtape and bureaucracy. We know it works. So that is what Senator 
Snowe and I are trying to do.
  This is the fourth time I have come to the floor of the Senate to 
urge seniors, as this poster says, to send in their prescription drug 
bills. I intend now to come back to the floor of this Senate every few 
days until this session ends and read, as I have, directly from copies 
of these prescription drug bills I am receiving.
  I know that so many Senators care about the needs of the elderly. I 
see Senator Chafee, who has long been an expert in health and a member 
of the Finance Committee; our friend, Senator Mikulski, who has 
championed the Older Americans Act issue so passionately for so many 
years in the Appropriations Committee.
  When we have these colleagues who have expertise in these issues and 
we know how acute the need is and we know we can do it in a bipartisan 
way, as Senator Snowe and I have been trying to do, it would be a 
tragedy for the Senate to pass on this issue and say: Well, let's just 
put it off until after the year 2000.
  We have consulted with senior groups. We have consulted with the 
insurance industry. We have consulted with those in the pharmaceutical 
sector. All of them have told us that our

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bill, while perhaps not their first choice for how to ensure that 
seniors get their coverage, will work. It will get seniors the help 
they need, and it will be something that we can do and do now--not 
after the 2000 election, not after some other period of campaign 
activity, but it is something we can do now.
  The Nation's seniors and our families can see as a result of my 
reading from these bills and what I am receiving from Oregon that I am 
very serious about their input. I hope that seniors and their families, 
as this poster says, will send in their prescription drug bill to their 
Senator. I hope they will be for the bipartisan Snowe-Wyden bill. 
Frankly, I am much more interested in hearing from them about the need 
for Congress to act. We can act. We can do it.
  I yield the floor.

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