[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 29, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9898-S9899]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       MAJOR REFORMS FOR AMERICA


                        Prescription Drug Prices

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, today a news story had the title 
``Leading Dem Plans to Blow Up Deal with Big PhRMA'':

       A Senate Democratic leader is hoping to blow up the deal 
     reached between the White House, drug makers and Senate 
     Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus by introducing an 
     amendment on the floor to allow prescription drugs to be 
     imported from Canada . . . et cetera.

  There is a picture of me. I woke up this morning not thinking I was 
going to try to blow up anything. So I want to respond to this.
  The question is, are those of us in this Chamber--a bipartisan group 
of 30 ranging from myself and Senator Snowe as the lead sponsor, 
Senator Stabenow, Senator McCain, and so many others who want to deal 
with this issue of fair pricing of prescription drugs--are we trying to 
blow something up? The answer is no. We have been trying for a long 
time in this Chamber to say we ought to have fair prescription drug 
pricing for the American people, and presently it is not fair.
  This is a pill bottle that would contain Lipitor made by Pfizer. It 
is made in Ireland and then sent around the world. These two bottles 
are identical. One is red, one is blue, but had the same pill made by 
the same company put in the same bottle, this one shipped to Canada, 
this one shipped to the United States. This was $1.83 per tablet. That 
is what the Canadian consumers paid. Our consumers got to pay $4.48 per 
tablet. The same pill, same company, same bottle, different price--
American consumers get to pay the higher price: $4.48 per pill compared 
to $1.83. It is not just Lipitor. That is the most popular cholesterol-
lowering drug, widely taken. It is not just consumers of Lipitor, it is 
consumers--this happens to be Canada, but in here I could put France, 
Germany, Spain, Italy, and so on--it is that we are charged the highest 
prices in the world for brand-name drugs. Plavix is 73 percent higher 
than Canada. Boniva is 90 percent higher than Canada. Zocor is 103 
percent higher than Canada. The list goes on--157 percent higher than 
they pay in Canada; 194 percent. It is just not fair.
  One day, I sat on a hay bale at a little farm reception with a guy in 
his eighties. We sat there just talking. He said: My wife has been 
fighting breast cancer for 3 years. He said: For 3 years, we have 
driven to Canada to buy Tamoxifen, where she could buy it for 80 
percent less than it cost her in North Dakota. That is the only way we 
could afford to pay for her drug to fight her breast cancer.
  I am just saying that is not fair. So a group of us have been trying 
for a long time to pass legislation that allows the consumer freedom, 
the freedom to say: If this identical drug is being sold in Winnipeg, 
Canada, at a fraction of the price why can't our consumers in this 
country access that drug? Why don't they have the freedom to access 
that drug?
  We have put out a piece of legislation that establishes much greater 
security for the safety of our drug supply with batch lots and 
pedigrees and everything that attaches to the security side, and then 
we say the American people can access the FDA-approved drugs in the 
countries that have the same chain of custody we have and that have the 
same kind of safety we have. Give the American people freedom. When 
they have that freedom to access those identical drugs at a lower 
price, sold at a fraction of the price in other parts of the world, 
then the pharmaceutical industry will be required to reprice those 
drugs in this country and give the American people fair pricing. That 
is just a fact.
  I understand the White House negotiated with the pharmaceutical 
industry and came up with a plan by which the pharmaceutical industry 
over 10 years would fill part of what is called the doughnut hole. It 
is complicated to explain--the doughnut hole is a portion of the drug 
benefit in which the seniors have to pay their own drug costs. So I 
understand there was an agreement between the White House and the 
pharmaceutical industry to provide a discount to seniors in the donut 
hole, but nobody here was a part of that agreement.
  The 30 or so of us who have been very strongly working to address 
this issue feel that when the health reform bill comes to the floor of 
the Senate, we intend to offer this amendment. If you don't deal with 
the increasing cost of prescription drugs when you try to put downward 
pressure on the cost of health care, in my judgment, you have failed. 
One of the fastest areas of cost increases has been prescription drugs. 
You are just going to leave that aside and say: Don't pay any attention 
to that; it doesn't matter. You can't do that. So we are trying to find 
a way to put some downward pressure on health care prices, and that 
must include putting some downward pressure on prescription drugs.
  Let me be quick to point out that the pharmaceutical industry does 
important things. I don't wish them ill at all. I have done things that 
support them, including research and development tax credits and so on. 
But I am not interested in just waiting to allow them to continue to 
price their brand-name pharmaceutical drugs much higher to our 
consumers than they do to virtually every other consumer in the world. 
It is not fair.
  When the health care reform bill comes to the floor of the Senate, I 
and my colleagues--Senator Stabenow, Senator McCain, many others; a 
bipartisan group--intend to offer this bill as an amendment. It is not 
intended to blow up anything. We weren't a part of constructing 
anything; we are not going to blow up something. All we are going to do 
is demand that some common sense and basic fairness be established in 
the pricing of prescription drugs in this country. The way to do that 
is to give the American people the freedom to access this identical 
prescription drug in other areas where it is sold at a fraction of the 
price.
  So, again, I wanted to disabuse anybody of the notion that we are 
going to blow up something. It is not true. I understand the 
pharmaceutical industry does not like what we are trying to do. They 
would like to have absolute pricing capability to price our drugs, in 
the case of Lipitor, at $4.50 a tablet when they sell it to others for 
less than half of that. I understand they would like that opportunity. 
On behalf of the American citizen, I say it is not fair. It is wrong, 
and it ought to change. If we pass the legislation we have introduced--
a broad bipartisan group here in the Senate--it will give the American 
people freedom and force, in my judgment, a repricing toward fair 
prices for prescription drugs in our country.
  Again, I wanted to make the point that we are not trying to blow up 
anything; we are trying to fix something that is wrong, and we are 
going to try to do that when the health care reform bill comes to the 
floor of the Senate.
  We have been guaranteed an opportunity. Senator McCain and Senator 
Snowe and I intended to offer this earlier in the year, and as a result 
of that, the majority leader said: Don't offer it here, but I will make 
certain you have the opportunity on the floor of the Senate. That is 
why we will be in line right toward the front end of the health care 
reform bill to offer the amendment and have a debate.


                       Financial Industry Reform

  If I might, for a couple of minutes on another subject, say that I 
have spoken often about an issue on the floor of the Senate that goes 
back some decade or so on the matter of financial reform. I am not 
going to revisit all of that, which happened 10 years ago, but I do 
want to say this: I happen to think one of the first items of business 
this year should have been financial reform. I know others disagreed. I 
know the President wanted to do health care and some other items first. 
But I know the President and his team are working very hard now on 
financial reform. It is very important to get this right.
  I wish to make a point. I have been reading recently about what is 
happening, and I would like to demonstrate what is happening.
  Last fall, a whole series of things steered this economy into the 
ditch, the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
  So now, September 12, 2009, The New York Times, ``A Year Later, 
Little Change on Wall Street'':

       One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the 
     surprise is not how much has changed in the financial 
     industry, but how little. Not much change on Wall Street.

  September 15, the Washington Post, ``The Wall Street Casino, Back in 
Business.'' Think of that. A year after the

[[Page S9899]]

almost unbelievable, deepest recession since the Great Depression, 1 
year later, ``The Wall Street Casino, Back in Business.''
  What are they talking about? Credit default swaps, derivatives, 
synthetic derivatives, you name it, all kinds of exotic products where 
they securitized everything. Everybody made a bunch of money, and on 
the way back from depositing money in their bank accounts one day, they 
discovered the economy collapsed because a lot of bad decisions had 
been made by people who were gambling.

  September 8, the Washington Post, ``A Year After Lehman, Wall 
Street's Acting Like Wall Street Again.'' Not much change.
  Wall Street Journal, August, last month, ``Bankers Play Dress Up With 
Old Deals'':

       Irresponsible securitization helped bring the financial 
     system to its knees. Yet, as banks start to heal, little 
     seems to have changed. Wall Street has quickly fallen back on 
     old habits.

  By the way, some of these FDIC-insured banks are still trading in 
derivatives out of their own proprietary account. They may just as well 
put a casino in their lobby or be playing Keno in their boardroom.
  This is Steve Pearlstein, September 11: ``Wall Street's Mania for 
Short-Term Results Hurts Economy.''
  Look, the reason I wanted to go through this is I agree not much has 
changed, and certainly not enough has changed. The question, it seems 
to me, as we deal with this issue of financial reform is, Will we 
address a central issue for me, and that is the too-big-to-fail issue? 
When we have decided as a matter of economic doctrine in this country 
that there are big companies that are too big to fail--too big to 
fail--to me, that is no-fault capitalism. We saw that last fall.
  We had the Treasury Secretary come to the Congress, and he said, on a 
Friday: If you don't pass a three-page bill giving me $700 billion and 
do it in 3 days, there is eminent collapse of the American economy. The 
fact is, I didn't vote for the $700 billion because I didn't think he 
had the foggiest idea what he was going to do with that money.
  The plain fact is as well that the very firms that did the kind of 
damage that steered this economy into the ditch--by the way, one of 
which the then-Treasury Secretary had previously worked for--
dramatically expanding leverage; engaging in unbelievable, 
sophisticated exotic products they couldn't even understand. But you 
didn't have to understand them as long as you were making a lot of 
money on them; securitizing almost everything; the scandal in subprime 
loans; paying massive bonuses to brokers who put mortgages out there 
called liar's loans, meaning people didn't have to describe their 
income in order to get a mortgage; and then securitizing the good with 
the bad and slicing and dicing as if you were cutting sausage and 
selling it to investment funds. So everybody was fat and happy, making 
all this money despite the fact they were creating this house of cards. 
And then the house of cards collapsed, and we had all of these firms 
with dramatic leverage and exposure. Then we were told: You know what, 
you have to bail them out. They are too big to fail. The American 
taxpayer has to come out and open their pocketbook and provide the 
funds because these companies are too big to fail.
  The fact is, when we discuss financial reform, there is too little 
discussion about this right now. All the discussion we see are these 
stories: ``Wall Street is Back in Business Again''; ``Banks Still 
Trading in Derivatives on Proprietary Accounts.'' They might as well 
just put up a blackjack table in their lobby. Nothing is changing.
  So the question is, when we get to this point--and it is very soon, I 
hope--will we seriously address the doctrine of too big to fail. If we 
don't, we will go down exactly the same road and, mark my words, we 
will find the same ditch once again for this economy. We must address 
this issue of too big to fail. Some of the too-big-to-fail institutions 
got a lot of TARP funds from the American taxpayer. And by the way, 
they have gotten bigger now--too big to fail, and now they are too 
bigger to fail, I guess. It doesn't sound like good English to me. But 
too big to fail is a problem, so you make them bigger. It makes no 
sense.
  This has to be a centerpiece in our discussion going forward. Are we 
going to continue to have no-fault capitalism where some of the biggest 
financial institutions in this country are engaged in gambling, trading 
in derivatives on their own financial accounts in a bank, while the 
bank is FDIC insured? Are we going to continue to allow that, or are we 
finally going to decide that this doctrine of too big to fail has to be 
addressed along with the other issues? Are we going to securitize 
everything? Are we going to continue to allow this unbelievable 
expansion of leverage? All of these are important questions.
  At the end of the day, to me, the question of the doctrine of too big 
to fail is overriding. We must end that proposition. It is not just me, 
there are a lot of good economists who believe this must be a part of 
our financial reform.
  My hope is that in the coming month or so following the discussion on 
health care reform, we turn to financial reform. I am going to be on 
the floor talking again about the doctrine of too big to fail and about 
the Federal Reserve Board's notion of what that doctrine means and what 
their responsibilities are.
  I yield the floor, and I make a point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. How much time remains on the Republican side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time is not divided.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that we be 
permitted to engage in a colloquy for up to 20 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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