[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 8 (Thursday, February 3, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S315-S316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PRESCRIPTION DRUG COVERAGE FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, I have made it clear my top 
priority for this session of Congress is to make sure that we finally 
add prescription drug coverage for senior citizens to the Medicare 
program.
  Towards that end, I have teamed up for more than a year with Senator 
Olympia Snowe of Maine with a proposal we believe can win bipartisan 
support in this Congress and effectively respond to the enormous need 
that all of us are seeing as we go home to our communities and visit 
with older people. The Snowe-Wyden prescription drug legislation is 
bipartisan. It is marketplace oriented--we use competitive forces as a 
tool to hold down the prescription drug bills for senior citizens. All 
of us in the Senate can identify with the approach we are using because 
the Snowe-Wyden legislation is modeled after the Federal Employee 
Health Benefit Plan which all of us in the Congress are fortunate to 
enjoy.
  As part of our campaign to get this bipartisan legislation enacted, I 
have made a commitment to come to this floor again and again and urge 
senior citizens, as this poster says, to send in copies of their 
prescription drug bills. We would like seniors to send in copies of 
their bills to each of us in the Senate, Washington, DC, 20510.
  As part of the effort to win passage of this legislation or a similar 
approach to it, I am going to come to the floor of the Senate again and 
again and again and read from some of the letters I am receiving from 
older people.
  For example, recently I had a chance to hear from an elderly woman 
who lives in Yoncalla, in southern Oregon. It is a small town. Her 
closest pharmacy is about 30 miles away. She has diabetes; she has 
osteoporosis. Her Social Security check, the entire source of her 
income, is $567 a month. She is taking eight different medications for 
her health problems. Her monthly drug costs come to about $400 a month. 
That leaves this elderly woman in southern Oregon with less than $200 a 
month to live on after she is done paying her prescription drug bill. 
Think about that, think about what it is like for an older person in 
this country having just a couple hundred dollars a month to pay for 
food and heat or other medical expenses.
  She told us she has had to basically cut back on buying her drugs on 
a monthly basis because she knows, unless she juggles all her bills, 
she is not going to be able to come close to meeting all of her 
obligations. She has $567 a month, lives in a small town, Yoncalla, 
Oregon. The pharmacy is a pretty good distance away; she has diabetes; 
she has osteoporosis, and when she is done paying her prescription drug 
bill, she has only about $200 a month left to live on. That is a 
disgrace. That is wrong in a country as rich and good and powerful as 
ours.
  Under the Snowe-Wyden bipartisan prescription drug legislation, with 
a modest copayment that woman would be able to get health insurance to 
cover her prescription drug bill. Our legislation would pick up 
essentially completely the prescription drug portion of her health 
insurance premium.
  The reality is, a person such as that older woman in Yoncalla is hit 
by a double whammy. Medicare does not cover prescription drugs and 
hasn't since the program began in 1965; and, second, she is in effect 
subsidizing big buyers, health maintenance organizations, big health 
plans that go out and negotiate discounts. It is no wonder that very 
often we see older people in our communities in this situation. This 
story is representative. I am getting accounts similar to this 
continuously. In every community in this country there are similar 
people who are walking an economic tightrope, seniors who, every month, 
balance their food bill against their fuel costs, and fuel costs 
against medical expenses. If they have any unexpected expenses at all 
that month, they fall off the economic tightrope and go further and 
further into the hole.
  Another older couple I heard from recently, this time from my 
hometown in Portland, told me they spend $5,264 a year on medications. 
This older couple gets Social Security benefits. The husband has a 
veteran's pension. Between the various sources of income they have, 
they receive just under $12,000 a year. They have to spend over $5,000 
of it on prescription medicines. I am not going to go into all the 
details of this, but they sent me an itemized bill of four pages that 
outlines the prescriptions they are paying for on a regular basis. Mr. 
President, $5,000 a year of their $12,000 income goes to pay for these 
medicines.

  I think we can come up with a bipartisan approach to deal with this 
issue, one that is marketplace oriented. We have a good model in the 
Federal Employees Health Plan. Senator Snowe and I are very proud that 
when we brought the funding plan for our legislation to the floor of 
the Senate as part of the budget last session we got 54 votes. A 
majority of the Senate is now on record in support of ensuring we fund 
prescription drug coverage for older people.
  I was very pleased with how the President handled the prescription 
drug issue at the State of the Union Address. He made it clear he was 
not interested in scapegoating anybody or saying Republicans were at 
fault or somebody else was at fault for not getting this enacted. He 
made it clear he wanted to work with the U.S. Congress. He said the 
need is urgent. He left open the opportunity to work with Republicans 
and Democrats on the particulars. Senator Snowe and I believe our 
approach is one that makes sense. We are proud of the fact we got the 
majority of the Senate on record voting for a funding approach for it.
  But our colleagues have lots of other good ideas. We recognize that. 
Our bill is called SPICE, the Seniors Prescription Insurance Coverage 
Equity Act. Other colleagues have other ideas as well. I hope seniors 
across the country will consider this poster I have up here that says, 
``Send In Your Prescription Drug Bill,'' to each of us in the Senate, 
Washington, DC, 20510.
  I am going to keep coming to the floor of the Senate, reading from 
these letters, reading from these accounts. Today you heard about an 
older person in Yoncalla, an older woman in southern Oregon literally 
with less than a couple hundred dollars a month left to live on when 
she is done paying for her prescription drug bill, and an elderly 
couple in Portland who worked hard all their lives, always played by 
the rules, who are spending more than half their income on prescription 
drugs.
  I will wrap up with this point. We as a nation are just starting to 
have the debate about whether we can afford to cover prescription 
drugs. My view is we cannot afford not to cover prescription drugs. If 
that older woman in Yoncalla cannot get help with her prescriptions 
when she has diabetes and osteoporosis and she is taking eight 
medications, if that couple in Portland cannot afford their 
medications, all of the gerontological research proves what is going to 
happen. Those folks are going to get sicker. They are going to land in 
the hospital where they need much more expensive care under what is 
called Part A of the Medicare program.
  I see my friend from Minnesota. He and I have worked often on these 
issues. The Presiding Officer of the Senate handled the Social Security 
issues in the House. We know what needs to be done. We know it needs to

[[Page S316]]

be done in a bipartisan way. We can only get important issues addressed 
in Washington, DC, if we work in a bipartisan way. That is what I have 
teamed up with Senator Snowe for more than a year to do.
  I hope, as I bring additional cases to the floor of the Senate and 
talk about the extraordinary suffering we are seeing among our seniors, 
that we can come together on a bipartisan basis to deal with this 
issue. I have spoken with Senator Daschle and Senator Lott about it. I 
know Senator Snowe is doing so as well. This is an issue to which every 
single Member of the Senate can point as an achievement if we come 
together and address it in a bipartisan way.
  Towards that end, I intend to keep coming to this floor and 
describing these cases. I have believed since the days I was codirector 
of the Oregon Gray Panthers that this was an important issue to 
address. It becomes even more important by the day as these new drugs 
are key to keeping seniors well and keeping them from landing in the 
hospital and incurring greater expenses.
  I hope seniors will take heed of this poster and send copies of their 
prescription drug bills to their Senators in Washington, DC, 20510.
  I will keep coming to the floor of this body again and again urging 
bipartisan support on this issue. It is my top priority for this 
session, and it ought to be a top priority for every Senator.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to have this issue 
addressed in this session of Congress and give our older people 
meaningful relief from their prescription drugs bills.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

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