[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 6 (Tuesday, January 10, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S220-S221]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, skyrocketing drug prices are crippling far
too many American families. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that
nearly 8 in 10 Americans believe the cost of their prescription drugs
is too high and that Congress should work to lower the price of
medication that people need.
This should be our top health priority for 2017, lowering drug costs
for families, not taking health care away from Americans with no plan
to replace it. Think about that. This Congress is hell-bent on, instead
of attacking one of the major causes of health care inflation--and we
have done a good job the last 10 years, by and large, of keeping prices
from going much higher than they would have otherwise. Keep that in
mind while we hear the generally specious arguments against the
Affordable Care Act. Instead of doing that, the majority party has
fallen all over itself to try to take away health insurance from
900,000 people in my State; taking away from 1 million seniors the
Medicare consumer protections and Medicare services of preventive care,
such as osteoporosis screening, diabetes screening, physicals, all that
the doctors order; taking away from 100,000 young people the ability to
stay on their parents' health care plan; and stripping from virtually
all Ohio citizens the consumer protections of denying people coverage
because of previous conditions, cutting people off their insurance
policy because they happen to get too sick and might have cost the
insurance companies too much money.
This health care coverage that has saved 24,000 American lives each
year since 2014, just think what could happen if we took away their
health care coverage.
Instead, lowering drug prices should be something we can come
together on.
[[Page S221]]
Americans of all political parties and Americans who don't even bother
voting are all facing skyrocketing pharmacy bills. There are concrete
actions we can take right now to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Senator Franken and I led 18 of our colleagues in outlining 5 of them
in a letter to the President-elect in December, including putting an
end to abusive price gouging, requiring more transparency from drug
companies, boosting competition and innovation in the market, and
allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate better
prices for seniors. That is what we do with the Veterans'
Administration. The VA, on behalf of 7 million veterans, negotiates
directly with the drug companies to get a significantly better price
for the cost of drugs--saves taxpayers, saves veterans. Medicare should
do the same thing.
Senator Klobuchar and I worked with several colleagues to reintroduce
the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act. Negotiating
better prices for seniors will save significant taxpayer dollars.
Instead of focusing on the priorities that the vast majority of
Americans agree on, Congress and President-Elect Trump are working to
throw 30 million Americans and some 900,000 Ohioans off their health
insurance with no plans to replace it. It is reckless and dangerous. It
will cause premiums to skyrocket. It will cause costs to go up for
everyone. Do you know what it does? It gives a $30 billion tax break to
drugs companies and tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the
richest Americans.
On the one hand, Congress will not do anything about drug prices
because the pharmaceutical industry, frankly, gave too much money to
far too many of my colleagues. On the other hand, this same Congress is
going to strip away health care and consumer protections to seniors on
Medicare and people of all ages and at the same time give a tax break
to the drug companies. We must fight against these attempts to decrease
coverage and increase costs for working families.
Whether you support the Affordable Care Act or not, we all agree you
can't ask people to change horses midstream without giving them a
second horse.
Last week, I spoke with one of my constituents, Kathy, who wrote to
my office last November with the heartbreaking story of her husband
Lee. He is fighting stage IV cancer. Before 2010, insurance companies
denied Kathy and her family the family coverage she needed because her
husband's cancer was a preexisting condition. Thankfully, the
Affordable Care Act stopped insurance companies from abusive practices
like this. It allowed Kathy's family to buy health insurance through
the marketplace, helping them afford the care he needs to fight this
devastating disease. Still, like so many Ohio families, Kathy continues
to struggle to afford the prescription medicines she and her husband
need. She fears what will happen when a family like hers is simply
kicked off their insurance.
Imagine 900,000 Ohioans with insurance and, like that--because of
partisan politics here, because so many of my colleagues ran for
President, in some cases, or ran for the Senate or ran for the House by
saying they are going to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and they
are going to get rid of it and not replace it for a couple of years
maybe.
Governor Kasich, Republican Governor in my State--also in the
Presidential race with my friend in the Presiding Officer's chair--has
said to the Senate and House, to Ohio's Republican Members: Don't
cancel the Affordable Care Act. Don't throw people off insurance unless
you are going to replace it with something right now that will take
care of those people; 700,000 people on Medicaid expansion, another
200,000 people, 26-year-olds, on their parents' plan, people on the
exchanges, people getting insurance in other ways.
When I was talking to Kathy the other day, she was choked up talking
about the stress and heartache dealing with a loved one with cancer,
how she can't even bear the thought of adding more insurance worries on
top of that. I was speaking to a hospital administrator today at one of
Ohio's great hospitals. He said he thinks what this Republican Congress
is going to do in the Affordable Care Act is morally reprehensible. He
said: How do I explain to people right in the middle of their treatment
that we can't do it anymore? Because we will not have the resources if
the Affordable Care Act is repealed and the insurance is canceled and
the Medicaid expansion is gone and hospitals can't take care of
everybody like they are pretty much now. How do I explain to somebody
right in the middle of cancer treatment, right in the middle of another
kind of long-term or short-term illness that their insurance has been
cut off?
Instead of kicking people off their insurance with no plan to replace
it and handing billions of dollars in tax breaks to the drug companies,
let us make our first priority lowering drug costs for the people whom
we say we are serving.
I yield the floor.
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