[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 87 (Monday, May 20, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3764-S3765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Prescription Drug Costs

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, tomorrow the Senate Judiciary 
Committee--which I chair--will hold a hearing on competition in the 
prescription drug market and its impact on the prices that Americans 
pay for medication.
  Patients in the United States pay the highest prescription drug 
prices in the world. Nearly three times what people in other developed 
countries pay for common medications and sometimes for exactly the same 
drug as prescribed in America. Take a well-known name, Jardiance, a 
diabetes treatment--you can almost hear the young lady singing the 
song, can't you? It retails for $700 a month in the United States. Do 
you know what the exact same drug made by the same company in the same 
place goes for in Canada? It is $150. Madam President, $700 for 
American citizens; $150 for Canadians for exactly the same drug.
  What is the difference? The difference is the Canadian Government 
cares, and the Canadian Government started acting years ago to protect 
the consumers in their country.
  The average new cancer drug entering the market last year had an 
annual list price of more than $200,000, and the prices keep going up. 
In 2022, drug manufacturers raised prices on more than 1,200 
medications by an average--an average--of 32 percent, four times the 
rate of inflation.
  For patients already facing a gut-wrenching diagnosis, the last thing 
they should have to worry about is whether they can afford lifesaving 
treatment. Yet 20 percent of seniors report that the sky-high cost of 
their medication forces them to skip doses or cut pills.
  No drug is more representative of this problem than insulin, the 
life-or-death drug for those with diabetes. Do you know when it was 
discovered? One hundred years ago. By Americans? Not this time. 
Canadian inventors not only found this new, lifesaving drug, they 
surrendered their patent rights--the rights to control it, and their 
rights to receive profit from it--for $1.
  Why? They said a life-and-death drug should not be a matter of 
bargaining, and they believe no one should profit off this lifesaving 
medicine.
  When Eli Lilly launched its insulin product--Humalog--in 1999, a vial 
cost a modest $21, but over the next 20 years, the company raised its 
price more than two dozen times to more than $330 for a vial.
  Thankfully, President Biden and Democrats in Congress capped the 
price of insulin at $35 a month under Medicare in the Inflation 
Reduction Act. It is unfortunate and impossible to explain--not a 
single Republican joined us in voting for this historic legislation to 
cap the price of insulin at $35 a month for Medicare.
  Eight pharmaceutical companies raced to the Federal courthouses in 
the hopes of stopping another component of that bill, which enables 
Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs.
  Big Pharma participates in the Veterans Health Administration, which 
has the authority to bargain for lower costs for our veterans, thank 
goodness. They have had that authority for decades. Yet we heard cries 
of price controls and socialism from Big Pharma as they opposed letting 
Medicare simply negotiate a better deal on behalf of senior citizens 
and taxpayers.
  Last fall, President Biden announced the first 10 drugs that would 
see price reductions from these negotiations. These drugs cost the 
Medicare Program more than $50 billion last year alone. When the 
President announced his list, I am sure many Americans already 
recognized the names of all 10 popular drugs. Why would we recognize 
them? Because they are the most heavily advertised drugs on television.
  Here is a trivia question you want to take to the next party you 
attend: How

[[Page S3765]]

many countries on Earth make it legal to advertise prescription drugs? 
Two. We know one; it is the United States. Anybody know the other one? 
New Zealand. The United States and New Zealand are the only countries 
in the world where you can legally advertise prescription drugs.
  Americans see an average of nine drug ads on television every single 
day. By filling the airwaves with these ads, Big Pharma is inflating 
demand for the most expensive drugs on the market. Some manufacturers 
are willing to spend more than $100 million a year to make sure that 
all of us can spell ``Xarelto'' and ask the doctor for it, but they 
never tell you the price, do they? You see all those ads and all the 
information and all the gibberish they put at the end of it. Don't you 
think it is worth knowing that Xarelto costs more than $500 a month in 
the United States, when a generic or other lower priced alternative may 
be just as effective? That is why Senator Grassley, Republican Senator 
of Iowa, joined me in introducing a commonsense, bipartisan bill to end 
the secrecy surrounding drug prices in advertising. Our bill would 
require Big Pharma to disclose the price on the ad.
  Incidentally, in 2020, Xarelto's manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, 
spent $22 billion that year on advertising--nearly double the $12 
billion it spent that year on research for new drugs.
  Big Pharma will tell you that the high prices paid by Americans are 
just the cost of innovation. They point to the money they spend on 
research and development to create the next generation of lifesaving 
drugs. I want them to come up with new drugs. I want them to make a 
profit in doing that. But I want them to be reasonable in the process.
  They always fail to mention one fundamental fact that we as taxpayers 
should not forget: Taxpayers fund the bulk of basic biomedical research 
through the National Institutes of Health. In fact, studies have shown 
that 99 percent of drugs introduced by the drug companies and approved 
by the FDA between 2010 and 2019 benefited from NIH research to get 
their start.
  Too often, the prices charged by Big Pharma do not reflect scientific 
advancement; rather, they are the result of manipulation, not by 
researchers or doctors but by lawyers in the patent system.
  Take the blockbuster drug Humira--at one time, the most heavily 
advertised drug on television. Its manufacturer, AbbVie, introduced the 
drug in 2002. For more than 20 years, the company exploited 
intellectual property laws to build a thicket of 165 patents.
  The way it works is this: If you discover a new drug, you have a 
legal right to be the exclusive salesman of that drug during a certain 
period of time. If there is a variation on that formula on that drug, 
the patent time can be extended. So patent lawyers are always at work 
to make sure they extend the patent period of price monopoly for these 
drug companies. It is supposed to reach a point where there is 
competition over a generic form of a drug. The lawyers do their 
darndest to make sure they don't reach that point. The result: more 
than $200 billion in revenue over Humira's 20 years of exclusivity.
  That drug is not unique. A recent study found that the top 10 
bestselling drugs in 2021 had a combined 1,429 patent applications 
filed, 72 percent of which were filed after the FDA approved the drug 
for sale. These blockbusters were covered by an average of 42 active 
patents, blocking generic competition and generating windfall profits 
for the drug companies.
  The Judiciary Committee has taken a leadership role in addressing Big 
Pharma's abuse. Last year, the committee unanimously reported five 
bipartisan drug-pricing bills to address anticompetitive pay-for-delay 
agreements, sham citizen petitions, patent thickets, and product hops, 
among other issues. This includes my bill with Senators Tillis, Coons, 
and Grassley to improve information sharing between the FDA and the 
Patent Office to ensure accuracy in the representations made by 
pharmaceutical companies to prevent gamesmanship.
  Tomorrow's hearing is going to be cochaired by my colleague and 
friend from Vermont, Senator Peter Welch. He told me when he recently 
came to the Senate, replacing Senator Pat Leahy, that this was an issue 
near and dear to him. I assured him there would be a hearing on this 
subject because it is so important to the country and so many people 
have an interest in it.
  I have been watching all those drug ads day in and day out like 
everybody else. It is time that we have the facts put in front of the 
American people instead of just the advertising and the jingles.
  Our committee work is far from done. Tomorrow's hearing will shed 
light on additional obstacles to reducing drug prices and how our 
committee can help solve this problem for the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. 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.