[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 15, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S4345]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, one of the issues that continues to haunt 
Americans is the whole question of the cost of prescription drugs. I 
have been troubled, as I have traveled across my State of Illinois, at 
the number of people I have met who are facing serious hardship trying 
to pay for their drugs.
  There was a hearing in the city of Chicago where a lady came forward 
to tell a sad story of how once she had received her prescription drugs 
from her doctor, she realized the cost of the drugs were so much that 
on her fixed income under Social Security she could not take it. This 
lady was facing a particular hardship because she had received an organ 
transplant. If she failed to take the antirejection drugs, she stood 
the chance of dying or having even a worse medical condition.
  Mr. President, do you know how she answered that particular dilemma? 
She moved into the basement of her children's home. She is living in 
the basement of her children's home so she does not have to pay for 
rent or utilities so she can have enough money to pay for the drugs to 
keep that new organ in her body that keeps her alive.
  That is a tale of desperation which unfortunately highlights the 
challenge facing Congress as we need to find a way to make prescription 
drugs not only accessible but affordable.
  There are many projected ideas out there and some of them are 
valuable and worth pursuing and some of them are certainly not. We have 
to keep in mind it is not just accessibility to the drugs, but it is 
also the price of the drugs, to say to someone, you have a right to buy 
the drugs, and we will help you up to a certain extent, may be of 
little or no value if the price of the drugs is so high the person 
cannot afford it. That, unfortunately, is a reality.
  Last year the cost of prescription drugs across America went up 16 
percent.
  Mr. President, try to imagine a program or even something in your 
home budget that you could deal with honestly with an annual increase 
in cost of 16 percent. So what we have tried to do on the Democratic 
side, as we address prescription drugs, is to go to the heart of the 
issue, to talk about the affordability of drugs, and to make certain 
the way we pay for these drugs is not at the expense of the people 
across America who need a helping hand.
  Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan has been a leader on this issue. 
She held a press conference I attended last week and talked about a 
prescription drug approach which needs to be thoroughly considered. 
Right now across America pharmaceutical companies are buying ads on 
television, in magazines, and in newspapers talking about the 
importance of research for new drugs. Believe me, there is not a person 
in the Senate who does not agree with that.
  We also know that many of these pharmaceutical companies are spending 
extraordinary amounts of money, in excess of their research budgets, 
for advertising. We see it every time we turn on the television, every 
time we open a magazine or a newspaper--full-page ads for new drugs. 
They show people dancing through a field of wildflowers and not 
sneezing, saying: Go to the doctor and ask for Claritin, or Clarinex, 
or Clarinet, or whatever happens to be the latest from Schering-Plough. 
When it comes to drugs such as Vioxx from Merck and other drugs, 
constantly we are bombarded with this information.
  What Senator Stabenow has found is that pharmaceutical companies 
across America are spending two to three times as much on advertising 
as they are on research to find new drugs. Why should they be given a 
tax deduction for promotion, marketing, and advertising in excess of 
what they are spending for research? I do not think they should.
  Frankly, I think we ought to call their bluff. If they tell us they 
need money for research, then for goodness' sake, put in it research. 
Give us the new drugs. Make the profits by giving us these kinds of 
blockbuster revelations of new drugs that can change our lives. But do 
not focus the money on advertising, promotion, and marketing when, 
frankly, all it does is create false need and false demand.
  So as we consider the prescription drug challenge that faces us, 
let's be honest about the program we put together, that it is 
accessible and affordable, and let us also be honest about the source 
of the money. On the House side of the Rotunda, the Republicans have 
proposed a prescription drug bill which is paid for by taking money 
from hospitals under Medicare and doctors across America. That is not 
the appropriate way to deal with it. We have to deal with it in an 
honest fashion so that the people of America are not shortchanged in 
terms of their health care.
  I yield the floor.

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