[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5024-S5025]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CRITICAL ISSUES

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise to ask our colleagues to move 
beyond the obstructionist position, to work together to get the 
supplemental passed so we can move on to other critical issues that 
affect our families. This is one. It is important. There are important 
pieces in this bill that deal with our issues of homeland security and 
certainly, representing the great State of Michigan, issues of border 
security are critical. We are very concerned about making sure we have 
the resources in place. There are other important resources in this 
supplemental bill.
  However, I am equally concerned about the ability to move beyond 
this, to get this completed on a bipartisan basis and move beyond this 
to the rest of the agenda that has to happen.
  The Presiding Officer has spoken eloquently about the sense of 
urgency families feel about medicine and the inability to afford 
critical lifesaving medicine, whether you have cancer, a heart 
condition, high blood pressure, or a disabled child and you need to be 
able to provide that child with medicine that is needed.
  We have the ability and, within our budget resolution, the capacity 
to pass a Medicare prescription drug benefit that will update Medicare 
and make sure there is a voluntary universal plan in place for those 
who need it, to be able to afford their prescription drugs.
  We also have the ability to lower prices across the board. Our side 
of the aisle has put forward a strategy to provide a way to lower 
prices for our business community, large and small. I have seen the 
business communities come forward, small businesses that are losing the 
ability to provide health care for their employees because premiums are 
going up 30 and 40 percent this year.
  The big three automakers shared some statistics with me. I came from 
a weekend-long event on Mackinaw Island, which I invite the Presiding 
Officer and my colleagues to come and enjoy during the beautiful summer 
months. There is a wonderful gathering of business and political 
leaders and university educators who come together once a year to 
discuss challenges facing the economy in southeastern Michigan and 
across Michigan and the business concerns. High on their list, if not 
at the very top, was the rising costs of health care, predominantly due 
to the explosion of the prices on prescription drugs.
  We heard a presentation from DaimlerChrysler that indicated on a SUV 
today priced at $18,600 the cost of employee health care is $1,300, and 
that the fastest growing part of that is prescription drug costs. We 
not only need to be providing Medicare prescription drug coverage for 
seniors and for the disabled, but we need to close the loopholes which 
allow the companies to stop compensation through generics that go on to 
market or are supposed to go on to market once the patents run out 
where the formula is available to other countries to use and to produce 
prescription drugs at a lower cost.
  We also need to open our borders to Canada. Two weeks ago, we passed 
fast-track trade authority, but the only thing we could not trade 
between the United States and Canada is prescription drugs, which makes 
absolutely no sense. We know, and we will be demonstrating next week in 
bus trips from a number of States across to Canada, that you can lower 
your prices at least in half.
  I am pleased to have joined with Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, 
Senator Jeffords from Vermont, Senator Wellstone from Minnesota, and 
many others, in an effort to open the border so we can have that 
competition, and our pharmacists, our hospitals, our businesses can 
have business relationships with the Canadians, bringing back American 
made drugs sold to them at lower prices. We have that bill. If we had 
the opportunity, we could complete the supplemental and bring up that 
bill and lower prices immediately.
  We have been able to put forward a bill that caps the amount the 
taxpayers subsidize in excessive advertising costs. The drug companies 
are spending 2.5 times more to advertise a drug than to create a new 
lifesaving drug, and we have a bill--and the Presiding Officer has 
joined in the effort--to cap the amount that can be written off on 
advertising and marketing costs to the same level that research costs 
are rip-offs on taxes, so taxpayers are subsidizing no more for 
advertising and marketing sales than we do for research. That would cut 
costs immediately.
  We also have a bill to allow more flexibility for States using 
innovative techniques as in Maine and Vermont, where they are being 
sued by the drug companies for coming up with creative ways to lower 
prices.
  We have an agenda to lower prices. We have an agenda that includes a 
comprehensive, voluntary, Medicare prescription drug benefit. If we can 
get beyond the current stalemate, we will have the time and opportunity 
to bring forward these issues that directly affect every single 
American--every business, every farmer, every worker, every family, 
every senior. It is an issue whose time has come.

  People in our States are saying it is time to act. It is past time to 
act. We have been talking about this. You would think, given all the 
time we spent talking about it, on both sides of the aisle, we could 
have funded a prescription drug benefit.
  The reality is we need to act. We need to do it now. I am deeply 
concerned that we are seeing, day after day, stalemate on moving 
forward on critical issues such as the supplemental that are so 
important to us and that are blocking us.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Ms. STABENOW. I am happy to yield to the distinguished Senator.
  Mr. REID. I say to the Senator from Michigan how much I appreciate 
her leadership on this issue. Yesterday the Presiding Officer gave a 
speech, right close to where the Senator was standing. It was one of 
the most significant speeches I have heard since I have been here. He 
illustrated, in the mind of anyone who was listening, why we cannot 
wait.
  I say to my friend from Michigan, I was on an elected board of 
trustees from a hospital district in 1966 when Medicare came into 
being. Prior to Medicare coming into being, 40 percent of the seniors 
who came into our hospital--it was a county hospital--had no health 
insurance. We were brutal. That is just the way it was all over 
America. We would go after whoever brought their mother or father, son 
or daughter in the hospital. We would go after them for their wages; we 
would attach their homes. That was the way it was all over America.
  Medicare is imperfect, but now virtually every senior citizen who 
comes into a hospital has some health insurance.
  In 1966, I think the Senator would agree, there really was not a 
paramount need for a health insurance plan that covered seniors for 
prescription drugs. That was not really a part of the

[[Page S5025]]

therapy at the time. But now the Senator would also acknowledge the 
average senior citizen has 18 prescriptions filled every year. They are 
lifesaving. They make people more comfortable. They prevent disease. 
How can we, the only superpower in the world, not have a prescription 
drug benefit for the program we call Medicare to take care of seniors? 
Would the Senator respond to that?
  Ms. STABENOW. I thank the Senator very much for those comments. I 
could not agree more. When Medicare came into being, as the Senator 
from Nevada knows, it provided coverage for the way health care was 
provided at the time. You went into the hospital, you had an operation, 
and it covered the medications in the hospital. But we all know that 
health care has dramatically changed, and we are proud of that. We are 
proud that we have these new lifesaving drugs that stop someone from 
having to have the operation. We know most health care now involves 
prescriptions.
  The problem we have is that this great American success story called 
Medicare that was put into place does not cover prescriptions. So 
effectively, now, we are not providing the health care that we promised 
our seniors and the disabled.
  So for me and I know for the Presiding Officer and for our leader 
from Nevada, it is common sense. It is past time to update Medicare. I 
know we are urgently trying to make that happen.
  I thank my friend for raising that. I know we have a tremendous 
amount of support all across this country for getting this done. I 
often think, in the debate on health care and this debate on 
prescription drugs, if we only had the same sense of urgency on this 
issue from a policy standpoint that we have when someone in our family 
gets sick or we get sick. When you find you are diagnosed with cancer 
and you have to have cancer medication, you can't say, ``This is too 
tough. We will do it next year. You can have your medicine next year.'' 
Or when your child gets sick, you can't say, ``You can't get sick this 
year. You can get sick next year.''

  Yet we put off this issue year after year after year. We need this 
kind of urgency that our families feel. I know our leader from Nevada 
feels that. Certainly the majority leader of the Senate and the 
Presiding Officer from Georgia have eloquently stated this. We are 
going to keep coming to the floor, day after day after day, creating 
this sense of urgency, urging people to get involved with us to create 
the sense of urgency that we need to get this done.
  Mr. REID. I know the Senator from Michigan has a schedule to meet. 
But will she yield for one more question?
  Ms. STABENOW. I would be honored, yes.
  Mr. REID. Having listened to the Senator and having listened to the 
Presiding Officer yesterday, I am--I can't say depressed; maybe in a 
legislative sense I am, but I am terribly concerned that we are wasting 
so much time. Everyone knows this bill that is being slow-walked here 
is going to pass. It has to pass.
  This bill making supplemental appropriations for further recovery 
from the response to terrorist attacks on the United States--we know it 
is going to pass.
  There are things in it that people may not like. But rather than 
waste 2 days' time here, why don't they file motions to strike what 
they don't like. It is a shame we have to invoke cloture.
  We have spent Monday, we have spent Tuesday, we have spent Wednesday 
doing basically not much, when we could have been working on this 
legislation about which the Senator is speaking now, about which the 
Senator from Georgia spoke yesterday. We are wasting time.
  I can be as partisan as a lot of people, but the State of Nevada is 
equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. I represent the 
Republicans of the State of Nevada just as I represent the Democrats. 
We in the Senate have to respond, in my opinion, in that same manner. 
The people about whom you speak are not Democrats; there are just as 
many Republicans as Democrats who need Medicare. We have to approach 
this in that manner. Would the Senator agree?
  Ms. STABENOW. I could not agree more. I was thinking as the Senator 
was speaking, we have seniors who got up this morning and literally sat 
at the kitchen table and said: Do I eat today or do I get my medicine? 
Do I pay my utility bill or do I get my medicine? They didn't check to 
see if their registration card was Democrat or Republican. That is not 
what this is about. This is about real people's concerns.
  People expect us to work together. They expect us to rise above those 
kinds of partisan efforts and work together to get things done for them 
in a meaningful way.
  So I share the same concern. Every day this week that we are not able 
to address this is another day where thousands, probably millions of 
people across this country, are trying to decide how to put their 
pennies together to be able to afford the medicine that they or their 
family need. I would say enough is enough. It is time to get on with 
it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

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