[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 4, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6032-H6036]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I wanted to take to the floor this
evening to talk once again about the prescription drug issue, both the
problem in terms of more and more Americans not being able to afford
the price of prescription drugs and the need to provide an expansion of
Medicare to cover prescription drugs under Medicare for America's
seniors and disabled.
I want to start out by saying that during the August break when I had
a number of town meetings and forums
[[Page H6033]]
and open houses at my district offices in New Jersey, this was the
number one issue that my constituents came to me and talked about.
Interestingly enough, it was not just the seniors who wanted to see
Medicare expanded to include prescription drugs and wanted a benefit,
but it was also a lot of younger people who expressed concerns about
the rising cost of prescription drugs and their inability to pay for
them.
It amazes me that we are now back, and it is September, September 4.
We have in the House of Representatives, the Congress as a whole,
probably a month or 6 weeks or so at the most before we adjourn. Yet we
are stuck in the fact that at this point there is no reason to believe
that either a prescription drug benefit or a mechanism to control the
price of prescription drugs is likely to pass before we adjourn. I
think that that is a tragedy. I think there is nothing more important
for us to do between now and the adjournment of this House sometime in
October than to try to address both of these issues.
I have talked many times about the need for a Medicare benefit that
includes prescription drugs. Democrats in the House, unlike the
Republicans, have taken the position and put forward a proposal that
would expand Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit.
Basically, we have talked about it, and we have put forward a bill that
would create a new Medicare program, very similar to what we have now
for part B in Medicare that pays for seniors' doctors' bills and that
simply says that seniors would pay so much a month, about $25, and 80
percent of the cost of their prescription drugs would be paid for by
Medicare, by the Federal Government. There would be a $100 deductible.
The first $100 you would have to pay out of pocket. After that, 80
percent of the costs would be paid for; and there would be a 20 percent
copay, very similar to what seniors now have under Medicare for the
payment of their doctor bills.
The sad thing about it is that the Republicans in the House refuse to
do that. Basically, what they have said is they want a privatization
plan. I was very upset to see that during the course of the August
break, President Bush repeatedly talked not only about the need to have
a private drug benefit but also about privatizing Medicare and Social
Security in general. Here we face a situation where our Federal budget
is once again in deficit, and we are spending money from the Social
Security trust fund to pay for other expenses of the government and the
President continues to talk about privatizing Social Security as well
as Medicare; and the Republicans push for a private program, saying,
Well, we'll give the seniors some money and maybe they can go out and
find a prescription drug plan in the private sector. They do not want
to expand Medicare to provide a benefit.
I would call upon my colleagues in the House, let us get together and
let us push for a Medicare benefit, for a prescription drug program
that really will make a difference. What is happening in the Senate is
interesting as well. Over in the Senate they passed legislation on a
bipartisan basis that would try to address the issue of price in some
significant ways, most important, by plugging up some of the loopholes
in the brand-name industry, in the patent system, whereby many of the
name-brand companies have been able to prevent generic drugs from
coming to market by expanding their patents and taking advantage of
loopholes in the patent laws to make it more difficult to sell a
generic drug when a patent should expire.
I know it is a difficult concept, but the bottom line is that one way
to reduce prices in a significant way is to pass the bill, the Schumer-
McCain bill, that passed the Senate and take it up here in the House
and pass that bill or a similar bill in the House that would make it
more difficult for these brand-name drug companies to extend their
patents or to come up with another drug that is similar and say that
generics could not come to market.
We feel that we can make a difference, that maybe 40 percent of the
cost of prescription drugs could be saved if some of these loopholes
were cleared up and we were able to encourage the use of generics. The
Senate also passed as part of the same bill the allowance for
reimportation through Canada as a method of bringing drug costs down.
We need to address this as well. The House should take up the Senate
bill that deals with generics, that deals with the reimportation and
simply pass it, or in other ways we have to deal with the price issue
as well. There are many ways to deal with that, and I think we can talk
about them more this evening.
But the bottom line is this inaction, where the House passes this
privatization of Medicare and tries to seek to provide a Medicare
benefit through some kind of private insurance is not going to pass the
Senate, and it should not because it is not going to be meaningful; and
the idea of expanding generics and providing for reimportation as some
method of bringing drug costs down is something that we should pass in
the House and at least try to get something accomplished between now
and the end of this session.
I see one of my colleagues who has been so much a part of this debate
all year, the gentleman from Arkansas, who owns a pharmacy and who is
very familiar with some of the problems that seniors face with
prescription drugs and I know who also has a very good bill on a
bipartisan basis with, I guess, one of our colleagues from Missouri
(Mrs. Emerson). He is working very hard to come up with a prescription
drug benefit as well along the lines of what I discussed earlier. I am
pleased to see him here and I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. ROSS. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I am here tonight to
rise in support of seniors all across Arkansas' Fourth Congressional
District and seniors all across America who will continue once again
tonight to go to bed unable to either afford their medicine or afford
to take it properly.
{time} 1945
As the gentleman from New Jersey mentioned, my wife and I do own a
small-town family pharmacy. We live in Prescott, Arkansas, a town of
3,400 people. Our pharmacy is a place where people come to share recent
photographs of their children or grandchildren, to celebrate the good
times together, and a place to gather to be there for one another
during the difficult times.
I have got to tell you that over the years in that small-town family
pharmacy that we own back home in Prescott, Arkansas, I have seen too
many bad times. I have seen too many seniors come through the door who
have been to the doctor. Medicare has paid for them to go to the
doctor, Medicare has paid for the tests to be run on them at the
doctor's office or the hospital, and, as a result of all that, the
doctor concludes that a senior citizen needs a certain prescription
drug in order to get well or live a healthier lifestyle. They come
through the door of our pharmacy and pharmacies throughout America to
learn that they either cannot afford their medicine or cannot afford to
take it properly.
This is America, and we can do better than that by our seniors. That
was a driving force behind my decision to run for the United States
Congress. I wanted to come here, I wanted to come to the people's
House, the United States House of Representatives, and pass legislation
that would truly modernize Medicare, to include medicine for our
seniors. Let me tell you why.
There is a senior citizen, a retired pharmacist, a woman in Glenwood,
Arkansas, who makes the point better than I can. She was a relief
pharmacist in my hometown at the pharmacy that my mom and dad used when
I was a small child growing up, which was not that long ago. She said
back in those days, if she had a prescription that she was filling that
cost over $5, that she would go ahead and fill the next prescription in
line while she built up enough courage and confidence to go out and
confront the patient and tell them that their medicine was going to
cost $5.
That really does drive home the point that today's Medicare really
was designed for yesterday's medical care. That is what prescriptions
cost back when we created Medicare.
Even health insurance companies, who are obviously in the business of
making profits, even they cover the cost of medicine. Why? Because they
know it helps people live longer and healthier lifestyles and avoid
needless doctor visits, needless hospital stays and needless surgeries,
the kinds of things that I have personally witnessed
[[Page H6034]]
in that small family pharmacy that my wife and I own back in Prescott,
Arkansas.
You see, I have seen seniors leave without their medicine, and,
living in a small town, I learn a week later where they are in the
hospital running up a $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 Medicare bill, or
where they spent $100,000 in Medicare payments to have a leg removed,
or where they are now spending $250,000 in Medicare payments to receive
kidney dialysis. All these things are avoidable, but it happened to
these seniors simply because they could not afford their medicine or
could not afford to take it properly. Again, this is America, and we
can do better than that by our seniors.
So I came to Congress and I wrote a bipartisan bill with the
gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), a Republican. I did it in a
bipartisan way because, you see, I think it is time for this Congress
to unite behind the need to truly modernize Medicare, to provide
medicine for our seniors, just as we have united on this war against
terrorism.
So we wrote a bill back in January. It was a very fair bill. It
called for a $250 annual deductible. It called for an 80 percent/20
percent copayment, with the government or Medicare paying the other 80
percent.
Basically what our bill did was treated going to the pharmacy like
going to the doctor and going to the hospital. It gave you the freedom
to get the medicine your doctor wanted you to have and it gave you the
freedom to choose which pharmacy you wanted to use.
Our bill took on the big drug manufacturers. We demanded the same
kind of rebates from the big drug manufacturers to help offset the cost
of this voluntarily but guaranteed Medicare Part D prescription drug
benefit. We demanded the same kind of rebates from the big drug
manufacturers to help pay for this program, just as the big HMOs have
been demanding and receiving from the big drug manufacturers for years.
Well, the Republican national leadership refused to give us a
hearing, they refused to give us a vote on this bipartisan bill. And I
continue to come to the floor and talk about the importance of it and
remind folks and remind the Republican national leadership that this
was a bipartisan bill, it was written by a Democrat and a Republican.
But it took on the big drug manufacturers, and they refused to give us
a hearing, they refused to give us a vote, and that is wrong.
Then, some 4 months before the election, the Republican national
leadership decided this was an important issue, so they began to write
a bill. In fact, in the middle of writing the bill they had to adjourn
the committee meeting to go to a fundraiser sponsored by the big drug
manufacturers. Do not take my word for it, please look. It is in the
Washington Post, $250,000 a person to attend this fundraiser for the
Republicans.
Then, after the fundraiser they went back into the committee and
continued to write the bill, and then it passed the House. I voted
against it, and I voted against it because I refused to vote for
something that is no more than a false hope or a false promise for our
seniors. That bill failed to take on the big drug manufacturers. That
bill did very little, if anything, to help our seniors, and it was the
first step toward privatizing Medicare.
You see, this Republican prescription drug bill that passed the
House, and did not get anywhere in the Senate, by the way, this bill
that passed the House does not make prescription drugs a part of
Medicare. It simply allows private insurance companies, dozens of them,
to go knock on your door or your mom's door or your grandmother's door,
all trying to sell the same policy.
Then here is what it does. It would require you to pay a monthly
premium, but they cannot tell us exactly how much. It would require you
to pay the first $250 out of your own pocket.
After that, it is more complicated than filling out an income tax
return. On the next $1,000 worth of medicine that you need, you are
only going to pay 20 percent. That sounds pretty good. On a $100
prescription, you pay $20. After you spend $1,000, and as a small town
family pharmacy owner, I can tell you for a lot of seniors that only
takes a few months. After you spend $1,000, on the next $1,000, between
$1,000 and $2,000, your copayment goes to 50 percent. In other words,
on that $1,500 prescription you pay $50. Then after you have spent
$2,000, and, again, as a small town family pharmacy owner, I can tell
you it only takes a matter of months for some seniors to reach $2,000
worth of medicine expenses, so after you spent $2,000, guess what?
Between $2,000 and $3,700, you are back paying the full amount, a 100
percent copayment to our seniors, and yet the bill requires them to
continue to pay the monthly premium.
If you add it all up, if my addition is right, counting the
deductible and the premium and this complicated formula of how much you
pay, depending on which day it is and on how much you spent in terms of
the copayment, on the first $3,700 worth of medicine you need every
year, the government, through Medicare, actually through a private
insurance company subsidized by Medicare, is going to provide you with
help to the tune of about $600. $600 in savings on a $3,700 drug bill
does not help seniors choose between buying their medicine, buying
their groceries, paying their utility bills and paying rent. It is
nothing more than a bogus plan.
Now, I just spent 5 weeks on the August district work period
traveling the 29 counties that make up Arkansas's Fourth Congressional
District, one of the more rural and larger districts in America.
Seniors came up to me every day and said, ``I know you are working
hard for this Medicare prescription drug benefit. When are others going
to begin to listen to you?'' And I told them I was coming back to the
floor, just as I have done for the past 20 months, and I was going to
continue to talk about this in hopes that people will listen, and they
will listen to the fact that it is time to write a plan that is
bipartisan, that it is time to write a plan that is fair, and that it
is time to write a plan that takes on the big drug manufacturers.
Let me tell you why. I recently conducted a survey. I compared the
price of the five most commonly used brand name drugs that seniors use.
I compared the price in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District with
the price paid by seniors for those same drugs in six other countries.
Do you know what I found? I found that the price that seniors pay on
average in Arkansas's Fourth Congressional District is 110 percent more
than what seniors pay in these other countries. And that is wrong. We
are talking about drugs that are being invented in America, oftentimes
with government subsidized research. They are being made by Americans,
they are being packaged by Americans, they are being shipped by
Americans, and yet our seniors are asked to pay 110 percent more here
than what we are requiring them to pay in other countries.
If these other countries, places like Canada and Mexico, if those
small governments can stand up to the big drug manufacturers and demand
a fair price, why can we not? I am not here to beat up the big drug
manufacturers. They create drugs that save lives and help us all to
live healthier lifestyles, and I applaud them for that. But sometimes
you have got to draw the line and say enough is enough.
A recent study indicated that some drug manufacturers spent more
money last year on those fancy TV ads than they did on research and
development, finding cures for diseases. You know the kind of ads I am
talking about, the ones that come on TV where they try to tell you
which drug you need to tell your doctor you need.
My colleagues, have you ever thought about that? That is crazy. That
is crazy, and it is time that we held the big drug manufacturers
accountable, and it is time that they step forward in good faith and
say we want to do for a Medicare prescription drug plan what we have
been doing for the big HMOs and the for-profit companies for years, and
that is providing rebates to help offset the cost of the program.
I am real disappointed at how the vote on the Republican plan, which
was nothing more than a false hope and a false promise for our seniors,
unfolded. They brought it to this floor for a vote at 2:39 a.m. on a
Friday morning when seniors were fast asleep.
I had a plan. I was proud to be one of four cosponsors, original
sponsors, of a bill that would provide a meaningful prescription drug
benefit. They would not listen to our bipartisan bill, so I
[[Page H6035]]
came back with another one and was one of four original sponsors of a
bill that basically again would treat going to the doctor and going to
the hospital and going to the pharmacy all the same.
Not only did they bring the bill, the Republican bill written by the
drug manufacturers for the benefit of the drug manufacturers, to the
floor at 2:39 on a Friday morning, they refused, they refused to allow
us to offer up a substitute. They refused to allow us to offer up one
single amendment to that bill.
All 435 Members of this body were elected the same way, by the
people, and we have been sent here to be a voice for the people. I say
give us an opportunity to have a vote. I will not even be picky here. I
am calling on the leadership to either give me a vote on a bipartisan
bill that the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson) and I wrote
together, a bipartisan bill to help our seniors, or to give me a vote
on the other bill that I wrote and offered up as a Democratic
substitute to the Republican plan that passed that Friday morning at
2:39 a.m., that does nothing for our seniors other than offer up a
false hope and a false promise.
People who know me know that I am not partisan. I am sick and tired
of all the partisan bickering that goes on in our Nation's capital.
There have been times when I have stood and voted with President Bush.
I believe there are extremists in both parties, and I am trying to
bring people to the middle to find common-sense solutions to the
problems that confront our Nation.
I can tell you that on this issue the Republicans are wrong, and it
is time for all of us to get right. It is time for all of us to come
together. It is time for all of us to work in a bipartisan way to write
a bill that will help bring down the high cost of prescription drugs
for our seniors and for working families all across America.
{time} 2000
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from
Arkansas, my colleague, for everything that he said, because I think he
is right on point on this issue of prescription drugs. But the two
things that the gentleman stressed the most, or that I picked up the
most, and they are clearly linked, and one is the effort on the part of
the pharmaceutical industry to try to scuttle, in my opinion, both any
effort in the House or in the Senate to address price, to try to bring
down the cost of prescription drugs, and even the effort to scuttle a
Medicare benefit, which the gentleman talked about and which we
continue to stress.
I just want to go through if I could a couple of those things,
because the gentleman, first of all, mentioned the Washington Post
article which was that day in, I guess it was in June, the night of
June 19 when the GOP had the big fundraiser, the very day that we were
in the Committee on Commerce and voting on a prescription drug benefit
and we actually had to adjourn at 5 o'clock so that they could go to
the Republican fundraiser. There was an article the next day, or
actually it was that same day, and I am just going to read a couple of
highlights of it.
It says, ``Drug Firms Among Big Donors at GOP Event.'' It said,
``Pharmaceutical companies are among 21 donors paying $250,000 each for
red-carpet treatment at tonight's GOP fundraising gala staring
President Bush, two days after Republicans unveiled a prescription drug
plan the industry is backing, according to GOP officials.'' This is not
Democrats talking. It says, ``Drug companies, in particular, have made
a rich investment into tonight's event. Robert Ingram, GlaxoSmithKline
PLC's chief operating officer, is the chief corporate fundraiser for
the gala; his company gave at least $250,000. Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America,'' that is PhRMA, a trade group funded by
the brand name companies, ``kicked in $250,000, too.''
It says, ``PhRMA is also helping underwrite a television ad campaign
touting the GOP's prescription drug plan.'' I am going to talk about
that a little bit too. It goes on to talk about the different companies
that contributed. But it said, ``Every company giving money to the
event has business before Congress. But the juxtaposition of the
prescription drug debate on Capitol Hill and drug companies helping to
underwrite a major fundraiser highlights the tight relationship
lawmakers have with groups seeking to influence them.
``A senior House GOP leadership aide said yesterday that Republicans
are working hard behind the scenes on behalf of PhRMA to make sure,'' I
mean that says it all. That is what it is all about. As the gentleman
said, the sad thing about it is, what really went on here in June was
that PhRMA and the drug companies got together and decided what they
wanted the prescription drug bill to be. They were determined that it
was not going to be an expansion of Medicare; it was just going to be
an effort to maybe get people to go out to find private insurance. But
most importantly, it would determine that it would not address price.
The gentleman and I have talked before, and I am just going to
mention again that in that Republican bill, they went so far at the
request of the pharmaceutical companies to actually write into the law
that there could not be any effort to address price. I just want to
read this noninterference clause that is in the Republican bill. It
says, the administrator of the program ``may not (i) require a
particular formulary or institute a price structure for the
reimbursement of covered outpatient drugs; (ii), interfere in any way
with negotiations between PDP sponsors and Medicare+Choice
organizations and drug manufacturers; and (iii), otherwise interfere
with the competitive nature of providing such coverage.''
Basically, what they say with this language is that there cannot be
any discussion of price. There cannot be any effort on the part of the
Federal agency that deals with this program to deal with price.
Mr. Speaker, we did the opposite in our bill, and the gentleman
mentioned that too. We said, in the Democratic bill, we specifically
mandated that the Secretary of Health and Human Services negotiate,
because now he is going to have 30 million, 40 million seniors,
negotiate to bring the prices down, because he is now going to have
tremendous power, having all of these seniors, so that he can negotiate
with the drug companies just like we do with the Veterans
Administration or with the military, and we can bring prices down maybe
30, 40 percent. That is just one way to do it. There are all kinds of
ways to do it. I talked about the generic bill before, that is a way to
do it. Reimportation is a way to do it. But the Republicans do not want
to do anything on the issue of price because basically they are in the
pockets of this name brand drug industry.
The other thing the gentleman mentioned and I will just mention
briefly is this data that came out that showed that the big drug
companies spent almost 2\1/2\ times as much on marketing/advertising/
administration as they spent on R&D. So the gentleman said, and he is
right; sure, there is no question that these drug companies are coming
up with miracle drugs, but that is less, 2\1/2\ times less than what
they spend on the marketing and the advertising.
This was done by FamiliesUSA, and it says, ``U.S. drug companies that
market the 50 most often prescribed drugs to seniors spent almost 2\1/
2\ times as much on marketing/advertising/administration as they spent
on R&D,'' according to the analysis. It goes into for each company the
percentage of revenue spent on marketing and spent on R&D. Just a few,
like Merck spent 13 percent on marketing/advertising, 5 percent on R&D.
Pfizer, 35 percent on marketing/advertising; 15 percent on R&D.
Bristol-Myers spent 27 on marketing/advertising; 12 percent on R&D. I
mean these are facts, there is no way to get around it.
The thing that really bothers me, though, is the fact that we went
home for this August break, but before that the Republicans passed this
fake bill at the request of the pharmaceuticals that does not even
address price. And what did they do? They went out and they started,
started even before we left, but it was in full force in August, this
huge TV ad campaign, the so-called issue ads, but they are just really
campaign ads, and they spent millions of dollars on these Republican
candidates, only the ones that voted for the bill, voted for their
bill, for the drug companies' bill, and so they influenced the policy
writing the bill, getting the bill passed, and then rewarding the
people who voted for it by
[[Page H6036]]
spending millions of dollars on advertising to get them reelected. They
have been doing it with this United Seniors Association, which is
basically just a shell, I guess we could call it, for the drug
industry.
So I am saying the same thing the gentleman has already said, but it
is just upsetting, because we are back here now, we are taking the time
here in Special Orders trying to explain all of this and, meanwhile,
these ads are going on, multimillions of dollars saying just the
opposite, 30 seconds, 1-minute ads. I do not know how we even succeed
in getting the word out about what is really happening about here, but
there is no question that we have to try, and that is why I appreciate
the gentleman being here, once again.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to spend a little time just talking a bit more,
if I could, about what the Democrats in the House have in mind for a
Medicare prescription drug benefit and how that contrasts so much with
the Republican proposal that passed the House. As I said before, what
the Democrats have been saying is that the only effective way to
provide a meaningful prescription drug benefit for seniors is if we
simply expand Medicare, which has been a very successful program,
probably one of the most successful Federal programs that ever existed,
and we include a prescription drug benefit within the confines of the
Medicare program.
Now, what we have put forward, and this was the Democratic
alternative to the Republican bill, as I said before, is very much
modeled on Part D. Seniors now under Medicare get their hospital
coverage under part A, and under part B of Medicare, they pay a premium
of so much a month, and they get 80 percent of their doctor bills
covered by Medicare, by the Federal program.
Now, the House Democratic proposal adds a new Part D to Medicare that
provides a similar voluntary prescription drug coverage for all
Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 2005. The premium is $25 a month,
the deductible is $100 a year, just like Part B; the coinsurance is 20
percent, the beneficiary pays 20 percent, and Medicare pays 80 percent,
and basically, it is a $2,000 out-of-pocket limit. After you have spent
$2,000 out-of-pocket, because of the copayment, then the rest of your
prescription drug bills are paid by the Federal Government 100 percent.
For those who are low income, those seniors who cannot afford the
premium, again, just like Part B, beneficiaries with incomes up to 150
percent of poverty pay no premium or cost-sharing; beneficiaries with
incomes between 150 to 175 percent of poverty pay no cost-sharing and
receive assistance. So depending on your income, the Federal Government
would actually pay for the premium or a certain part of the premium.
But again, it is a 20 percent a month premium, so most seniors would
pay the premium and they would get the benefit, just like they do with
the current Part B under Medicare.
Now, the amazing thing to me, and I do not want to keep stressing it
all night, but the amazing thing to me is that during the August break
I kept hearing the President of the United States constantly talk about
the need to privatize not only a prescription drug program, which would
be an expansion of Medicare, but actually talk about privatizing
Medicare itself. He had a forum, I think it was in Waco, Texas around
the middle of August, where he talked about, it was sort of an economic
forum primarily, but he also talked about Medicare, and he said that he
thought Medicare should be privatized. So what we are seeing on the
part of the Republican leadership and the President is that they
basically do not like Medicare. Not only would they not expand Medicare
to cover prescription drugs, they do not like the traditional Medicare
that we have now and that has been such a successful program that so
many seniors depend upon.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time that I have come to the floor
to point out that so many in the Republican Party historically have
been critical of Medicare itself, let alone expanding Medicare for
prescription drugs. Despite Medicare's effectiveness at improving the
health of America's seniors and the disabled, there are many
Republicans that continue to oppose it. Former Speaker Gingrich once
said that Medicare would wither on the vine because we think people are
voluntarily going to leave it. Even as recently as 1995, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Armey), who is the Republican majority leader now in
the House of Representatives, called Medicare a program I would have no
part of in a free world. Of course, the program is too popular to
repeal, so instead the House Republican leadership has implemented a
budget plan that is projected to raid all of the Medicare surplus.
So what we are seeing here now with the Republican budget and with
the Republican economic policy is that we go back into debt and we
start borrowing from Social Security, we borrow from Medicare and,
ultimately, these very good social programs, one a pension program,
Social Security, and another a health care program, Medicare,
eventually have no money, or have less and less money, and then we take
that argument to say, well, if they have no money, we better come up
with something else and we better privatize the program. It is
unbelievable to me that this is the way that they are proceeding. So
even though I wanted to stress the prescription drug program tonight, I
cannot help but point out that this is part of a larger effort on the
President's part and on the Republican leadership's part to talk about
privatizing Medicare as well as Social Security.
I think that the most important point that I can end with tonight is
to point out that as Democrats we feel that it is our obligation to not
only continue with a strong Medicare program, as well as a strong
Social Security program, but that we need to build on those programs,
and that is why when we talk about a prescription drug plan we want it
to be part of Medicare, an expansion of Medicare, because that has been
a very successful program. It is the only way to guarantee that every
senior not only gets health care, but gets a prescription drug plan. If
you privatize prescription drugs as a benefit, you have no guarantee
that people in any particular part of the country are going to have
access to health insurance because they probably will not be able to
buy it. It will not be for sale. If you include it as part of Medicare,
you guarantee that every senior is going to have access to a good
prescription drug program.
The last point I will make is that not only do we need to provide a
benefit for seniors, we need to address the rising cost of prescription
drugs, and whether that means that we, in the context of Medicare, give
the Secretary negotiating power to bring prices down through
negotiations over the cost of drugs, or it means that we deal with the
generic issue, as I mentioned before, and plug up a lot of loopholes so
that it is easier to bring generic drugs to market, or we allow
reimportation as a last resort from Canada or other countries, we need
to get at this price issue. I am just so upset over the fact that the
Republican leadership in the House refuses to address the price issue.
We are going to continue to make the price issue an important point and
try to get something passed here on that issue as well as the benefit
before we adjourn this Congress in October.
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