[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S412-S414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Madam President, there is a lot of discussion in our country about 
how divided we are as a people, and there is no question that on many 
issues, that is absolutely true.
  But it turns out that on one of the most important matters facing the 
American people, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, progressives, 
moderates, and conservatives are all united, and they are united on the 
need to take on the outrageous corporate greed in the pharmaceutical 
industry

[[Page S413]]

and to substantially lower the incredibly high prices we pay for 
prescription drugs in this country.
  On that issue, the American people are quite united. Today, millions 
of Americans are forced to make the unacceptable choice between feeding 
their families or buying the medicine they need to ease their pain or 
to stay alive. Seniors from Vermont to Alaska are forced to split their 
pills in half because they don't have enough money to fill their 
prescriptions. Nobody really knows how many people die each year 
because they lack the medicine that their doctors prescribe.
  But a 2020 study by West Health found that by the year 2030, over 
100,000 Medicare recipients could die prematurely every year because 
they cannot afford to buy their lifesaving medicine--100,000 seniors 
every year. All over this country, in every State in this country, the 
American people are asking some pretty simple questions. They want to 
know how does it happen that in the United States, we pay by far--not 
even close--the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. How 
does it happen? Why is it, people are asking, that nearly one out of 
every four Americans cannot afford the prescriptions that their doctors 
write?
  Think about how crazy that is. People walk into a doctor's office. 
They get a diagnosis. The doctor writes out a script. They can't afford 
to fill that prescription. They get sicker or maybe they end up in the 
emergency room, maybe they end up in the hospital, maybe they die. 
People are asking: How does it happen that nearly half of all new drugs 
in the United States cost more than $150,000 a year? They cost more 
than $150,000 a year.
  A few years ago, I took a busload of people dealing with diabetes 
from Detroit, MI, over the Canadian border to a drugstore in Windsor, 
Ontario. I think the trip took us maybe 45 minutes. There in Windsor, 
Canada, people on the bus--diabetics--were able to purchase the same 
insulin products that they bought in the United States for one-tenth 
the price--a 45-minute trip, same product, one-tenth the price. I will 
never forget it. Tears were coming down the eyes of people who were 
buying their product. They couldn't believe how much money they were 
saving.
  In 1999, 24 years ago, I was a Member of Congress, and I took another 
busload of people. This time it was women in northern Vermont who were 
suffering with breast cancer. We took them to a pharmacy in Montreal, 
Canada. Once again, they paid one-tenth the price for tamoxifen, a 
breast cancer drug that they desperately needed.

  So how does it happen that in Canada and other major countries, the 
same exact medicines manufactured by the same exact companies are sold 
for a fraction of the price that we pay in America? It is a simple 
question. It is a question Democrats, Republicans, Independents--
everybody wants an answer to it.
  Well, the truth is that the answer to that question, in my view, is 
not complicated. In fact, it can be summed up in just three words, and 
that is unacceptable corporate greed--unacceptable corporate greed.
  Over the past 25 years, the pharmaceutical industry has spent $8.5 
billion on lobbying--$8.5 billion on lobbying and over $745 million on 
campaign contributions so that we can continue to pay the highest 
prices in the world for prescription drugs.
  Incredibly, last year, drug companies hired over 1,700 lobbyists to 
knock on every door in the Capitol--1,700 lobbyists--former leaders of 
the Democratic Party, former leaders of the Republican Party. There are 
535 Members of Congress. They have 1,700 lobbyists from the 
pharmaceutical industry--three lobbyists for every Member of Congress.
  Meanwhile, as Americans die because they cannot afford the 
medications they need, the pharmaceutical industry makes higher profits 
every year than other major industries. Year after year after year, 
they lead the index in terms of their profits. Between the years 2000 
and 2018, drug companies in this country made over $8 trillion--that is 
with a ``t''--$8 trillion in profits. In fact, in 2021, just 10 
pharmaceutical companies in the United States made a total of more than 
$102 billion in profits, up 137 percent from the previous year.
  It is the greed that we are seeing manifest itself--not just in 
corporate profits. It also manifests itself in the exorbitant 
compensation packages that the pharmaceutical industry has given to its 
CEOs and other top executives within the industry.
  I hope that people who are listening to us this afternoon--people who 
can't afford to pay for their prescription drugs--hear this, and that 
is according to a report done by the Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee staff, which I chair, released today: In 2021, while 
hundreds of thousands of Americans died from COVID, 50 pharmaceutical 
executives in just 10 companies made $1.9 billion in total 
compensation--50 executives, $1.9 billion. The same 50 executives are 
in line to receive $2.8 billion in golden parachutes once they leave 
their companies.
  Let me give you just a few examples. AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez made 
nearly $62 million in total compensation in 1 year. The CEO of Eli 
Lilly, David Ricks, made more than $67 million in 1 year. Incredibly, 
the CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Leonard Schleifer, made nearly 
$453 million in total compensation in 1 year--$453 million in 1 year.
  Meanwhile, while we are told over and over again that the reason we 
have such high drug prices in America is because of the need of the 
drug companies to invest in research and development--that is what we 
are told over and over again: We need to charge you outrageous prices 
so that we can use that money to invest in research and development for 
new drugs. Well, it turns out that over the past decade, 14 major 
pharmaceutical companies spent $747 billion not to research and develop 
lifesaving drugs but to make their wealthy shareholders even wealthier 
by buying back their own stock and handing out huge dividends. It turns 
out, amazingly enough--or maybe not amazingly--that the drug companies 
spent $87 billion more on stock buybacks and dividends than they spent 
on research and development.
  So when you hear about all of the need for high prices for research 
and development, they spent $87 billion more on stock buybacks and 
dividends than on research and development.
  The truth is, we are dealing here today not just with an economic 
issue in terms of the high price of prescription drugs--it is a very, 
very important economic issue--but we are dealing with something even 
more profound, and that is the moral issue. The question, I think, that 
Americans should be asking themselves is, Is it morally acceptable that 
tens of thousands of people die each year in our country because they 
cannot afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while at the same 
time the drug companies make billions in profits and provide their CEOs 
with huge compensation packages?
  Is it morally acceptable that, at a time when the taxpayers of this 
country spent tens of billions a year on research and development for 
lifesaving drugs, many of these same taxpayers who helped fund the 
research and development for new drugs are unable to afford those 
drugs?
  Is it morally acceptable that the business model of the 
pharmaceutical industry today is primarily not to create the lifesaving 
drugs we need for cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, and so 
many other terrible illnesses, but, rather, through their excessive 
greed, to make as much money as they possibly can?
  I should point out that it has not always been that way. There was 
once a time when the inventors of lifesaving drugs were not obsessed 
with making huge sums of money but were, instead, obsessed with ending 
the terrible illnesses that plagued humanity.
  In the 1950s, for example, there was Dr. Jonas Salk, who invented the 
vaccine for polio. Salk's work saved millions of lives and prevented 
millions more from suffering paralysis. It has been estimated that if 
Dr. Salk had chosen to patent the polio vaccine, he would have made 
billions of dollars. But he did not.
  When asked who owns the patent for this vaccine, this is what Dr. 
Salk said:

       Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could 
     you patent the sun?

  What Dr. Salk understood was that the purpose of the vaccine he 
invented was to save lives, to make sure that as many people all over 
the world were able to receive it, and not to make himself obscenely 
rich.

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  And Salk, among other great scientists, was not alone. In 1928, 
Alexander Fleming, a scientist from Scotland, discovered penicillin at 
St. Mary's Hospital in London. Fleming's discovery of penicillin 
changed the medical world and saved millions of lives.
  I am sure that Alexander Fleming could also have become a 
multibillionaire if he had chosen to own the exclusive rights for this 
antibiotic. But he did not.
  When Fleming was asked about his role, he did not talk about the 
outrageous fortune he could have made through his discovery. Instead, 
he said:

       I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only 
     discovered it by accident.

  And then there was the great scientist Frederick Banting from Canada. 
In 1921, Dr. Banting, along with two other scientists at the University 
of Toronto, invented insulin--insulin, a drug we are hearing a whole 
lot about now. When Dr. Banting was asked why he wouldn't patent 
insulin and why he sold the rights to his invention for $1--$1--he 
replied:

       Insulin does not belong to me. It belongs to the world.

  Frederick Banting.
  It has been estimated that Dr. Banting's invention of insulin saved 
some 300 million lives. Once again, in Dr. Banting, we saw a great 
scientist make it clear that his purpose in life was to help humanity 
prevent suffering and save lives, not just to make billions for 
himself.
  Meanwhile, while Dr. Banting sold his patent for insulin for $1 so 
that humanity could benefit from his discovery, I should point out that 
Eli Lilly, one of our Nation's largest drug companies, has increased 
the price of insulin by 1,200 percent over the past 27 years, to $275, 
while it costs just $8 to manufacture--selling it for 275 bucks and it 
costs $8 to manufacture--not quite the spirit of Frederick Banting.
  Now, let's fast forward to the Covid pandemic, this horrible moment 
in our history when we have lost over 1 million Americans and tens of 
millions have suffered various levels of illness.
  Moderna, a drug company in Massachusetts, worked alongside the 
National Institutes of Health to develop the vaccine that so many of 
our people have effectively used--used by millions of people 
effectively. It is widely acknowledged that both the company and the 
National Institutes of Health, or NIH, were responsible for the 
creation of this vaccine. They worked together.
  After the company received billions of dollars from the Federal 
Government to research, develop, and distribute the COVID vaccine, 
well, guess what happened. It turns out that the CEO of Moderna, 
Stephane Bancel, became a billionaire overnight and is now worth $5.7 
billion. Further, the two cofounders of Moderna, Noubar Afeyan and 
Robert Langer, also became billionaires and are now both worth $2 
billion each. And one of the founding investors in Moderna, Tim 
Springer, is worth $2.5 billion.
  None of them were billionaires before the taxpayers of our country 
funded the research and development for the COVID-19 vaccine, and, 
collectively, this handful of people at Moderna are now worth over $11 
billion. Meanwhile, Moderna, as a whole, made over $19 billion in 
profits during the pandemic.
  Given that reality, given the enormous amount of taxpayer support, 
how has the CEO of this company thanked the taxpayers of America for 
the huge profits that Moderna has experienced and for the incredible 
wealth that he and his other executives have experienced?
  Well, he is thanking them by proposing to quadruple the price of the 
COVID vaccine to about $130 once the government stockpile runs out. And 
let us be clear, by the way, this is a vaccine that costs just $2.85 to 
manufacture.
  On March 22, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee will be holding a hearing to discuss this subject, and the 
bottom line that we will be discussing is this: Does Moderna think that 
it is appropriate to quadruple prices for the vaccine after receiving 
billions of dollars in taxpayer support?
  While Moderna may be a poster child for contemporary corporate greed, 
certainly, they are not alone. A number of years ago, the former CEO of 
Gilead became a billionaire by charging $1,000 for SOVALDI, a 
hepatitis C drug that was discovered by scientists at the Veterans' 
Administration. This drug costs just $1 to manufacture and can be 
purchased in India for $4.

  The Japanese drug maker Astellas, which made a billion dollars in 
profits in 2021, recently raised the price of the prostate cancer drug 
Xtandi by more than 75 percent in the United States to nearly $190,000. 
This is a drug that was invented by federally funded scientists at UCLA 
and can be purchased in Canada for one-sixth the price charged in 
America. Taxpayers funded the development of the drug and now pay six 
times more than Canadians do for the same product. And it goes on and 
on and on.
  There is no rational reason why the HIV treatment, BIKTARVY, costs 
over $45,000 per year in the United States but only $7,500 in France, 
or why a weekly dose of the autoimmune medicine Enbrel costs over 
$1,700 in the United States but just $300 in Canada--et cetera, et 
cetera, et cetera. It goes on and on and on.
  The American people, regardless of their political affiliations, are 
sick and tired of being ripped off by the pharmaceutical industry. Now 
is the time for us to have the courage to take on the 1,700 lobbyists 
all over Capitol Hill, to take on the unlimited financial resources of 
that industry. Now is the time to stand with the American people and 
substantially lower prescription drug prices in our country, and the 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is going to be 
actively involved in that process.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The senior Senator from Wyoming.