[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16997-17002]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FOR AMERICAN SENIORS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, there is a lot that is important to the 
American people that is being lost in the current focus on the 
situation in Iraq and the administration's plans for regime change and 
a military invasion. And I want to spend this evening talking about one 
of those issues that is getting less attention than it deserves.
  I am talking about the fact that in my home State of Maine and all 
across this country, seniors who need prescription drugs in many cases 
simply cannot afford to buy them. In my office, my district office in 
Maine, people are coming in all the time, calling on the phone or 
stepping into the office and basically saying, What can I possibly do? 
I can no longer afford my prescription drugs.
  People who have a Social Security check each month of $800 to $1,200 
can wind up with $400, $500 a month in prescription drug costs, and the 
math just does not work. They cannot do it. People are, in fact, giving 
up food in order to buy their medicine or giving up their medicine in 
order to pay the rent or buy food.
  We have been dealing with this problem for years. Back in 1998 I 
introduced a bill that would provide a 30 percent discount to all 
Medicare beneficiaries and the cost of all of their prescription drugs 
at no significant cost to the Federal Government. But the 
pharmaceutical industry weighed in, lobbied heavily, described the plan 
as price controls even though it is one that is

[[Page 16998]]

widely employed by other industrialized nations and nothing has 
happened on that front.
  The Democratic Caucus year after year has proposed a Medicare 
prescription drug benefit. That is a benefit for Medicare beneficiaries 
operating in the way that part B of Medicare does, the way doctors, the 
expenses for physicians is covered, that is, seniors would pay a 
certain amount per month and get a significant portion of their 
expenses covered, both by the amount they pay and by contributions from 
general revenues. Well, that is what we thought ought to appear here.
  But tonight I want to spend some time talking about what really goes 
on here in Washington, what really goes on out in the field, and why we 
do not have even a discount for Medicare beneficiaries or a Medicare 
benefit. And we may remember, it has been a long time, but some may 
remember in one of the debates, one of the Presidential debates in the 
year 2000, President Bush said, I support a Medicare prescription drug 
benefit.
  I knew what he meant. Lots of people in this Congress knew what he 
meant. But never in the past 2 years has the administration presented a 
plan for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Not one.
  Let us look at a little bit of what has been going on in the Congress 
and why we have not been able to accomplish what we should. Let us look 
for a moment at the last election cycle, 1999 to 2000. The 
pharmaceutical industry in that time period, according to the consumer 
watchdog group Public Citizen, spent $177 million lobbying Members of 
Congress and $20 million in campaign contributions. So that is $200 
million that the pharmaceutical industry spent in those 2 years in 
order to try to get its way.
  At the same time they employed in the year 2000, 625 lobbyists here 
in Washington. Think about it. There are only 535 Members of the Senate 
and the House put together, but the pharmaceutical industry hired 625 
lobbyists to make sure that their views were well represented in the 
Congress.
  But that is not the end of the story. In the same time period, that 
election cycle, the pharmaceutical industry was the largest interest 
group spending money on political ads, so-called issue ads, of any 
group in the country. They spent $50 million. And we can be sure, we 
can be sure based on their advertising so far in this cycle that they 
will far exceed that number.
  Let us take a look at how these groups operate. The pharmaceutical 
industry not only has legions of professional lobbyists, but it is also 
funding what they call grass roots groups. A lot of us call this 
Astroturf lobbying because the grass is manufactured. And I want to 
call attention to a couple of those groups.
  One group is the 60 Plus Association, which not so long ago did an ad 
in the Houston Chronicle, an ad thanking the majority whip, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), for his work on a prescription drug 
benefit plan. And the advertisement of the 60 Plus Association, we need 
to know, is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. It sounds like a 
group just of grass roots seniors, but it is not. It is funded by the 
pharmaceutical industry. Here is what the ad said. It said: ``Results, 
not politics, for American seniors.'' And it goes on and on talking 
about this particular publication.
  What we need to know, what people need to know about this industry 
and this campaign, Mr. Speaker, is that 2 days after the House 
Republicans unveiled their prescription drug plan back in June, a plan 
that was backed by the pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical 
companies were among 21 donors paying $250,000 each for special 
treatment at a GOP fund-raising gala headed by President Bush.

                              {time}  1715

  That same week, a senior House Republican leadership aide was quoted 
in the newspaper as saying that Republicans are ``working hard behind 
the scenes on behalf of PHARMA,'' the industry association, ``to make 
sure that the party's prescription drug plan for the elderly suits drug 
companies.''.
  In fact, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during markup of 
the Republican prescription drug bill had to break early that day so 
that Republican law makers could attend the dinner, and that was 
reported in the Washington Post on June 19, 2002. At that time, the 
drug lobby had financed a massive $4.6 million issue ad campaign in 18 
competitive districts, some of them held by Republicans.
  This September one ad in the Houston Chronicle praising the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. DeLay) for the plan he supports is really a remarkable 
document. The pharmaceutical industry wrote the bill, wrote the 
Republican prescription drug bill. It passed by a very narrow majority 
on essentially a party line vote, and now the pharmaceutical industry 
goes out running ads thanking the Republicans for passing the bill that 
the pharmaceutical industry wrote. If people have enough money in this 
country, they can do a lot to hoodwink the American people.
  Let us take a look at this particular ad and just talk about some of 
the allegations made here. The suggestion is that the Republican 
prescription drug plan includes a guaranteed drug benefit under 
Medicare for all seniors, but what the ad does not tell us is that it 
does not provide a guaranteed defined benefit with a guaranteed 
premium, and the reason for that is that the plan relied on insurance 
companies to provide the benefit. It was not a Medicare benefit. It was 
an Aetna benefit, a CIGNA benefit, a United benefit. It was something, 
but it was not a benefit, and we can look through that entire bill and 
look for the number that seniors will have to pay to be part this so-
called Medicare prescription drug benefit plan and we cannot find the 
number anywhere in the bill because it does not exist, because what the 
bill consists of is a subsidy to insurance companies in the hope that 
they will turn around and provide stand-alone prescription drug 
insurance to seniors, a kind of policy that does not exist at all today 
and probably will never exist but which is the heart and soul, if those 
are the words, of the Republican bill.
  Let me deal with the other four allegations here. The suggestion is 
that this will reduce out-of-pocket costs by up to 70 percent, but what 
the ad does not tell us is that those seniors with drug costs between 
$2,000 and $3,700, within that group, will have to pay 100 percent out-
of-pocket if the insurance companies, given the subsidy, offer the plan 
that is assumed by the Republican prescription drug bill, all of which 
is highly unlikely.
  The third claim is that this plan, the Republican plan, would offer 
seniors the flexibility to choose the plan that best meets their need, 
but what the ad does not say is that the plans under the Republican 
prescription drug bill are not under the Medicare program but private 
insurance companies and HMOs, and as someone who comes from the State 
of Maine, it is very clear to me that Maine, another rural State, is 
going to be one of the last places where insurance companies rush in 
and say we really want to provide prescription drug insurance to 
seniors, a group that represents 12 percent of the population but buys 
33 percent of all prescription medications.
  Then the fourth claim in this ad run by the astroturf organization in 
favor of the pharmaceutical industry is that it will provide complete 
protection against catastrophic drug costs, but it does not say that 
between $2,000 and $3,700 a person pays 100 percent out of pocket, and 
the catastrophic protection assumes that again there will be an 
insurance company to provide the benefit.
  The final claim here is that there is no government bureaucrat 
between a person and their doctor, but there is someone between them 
and their doctor, and that will be the private insurance company, the 
HMO who will decide what drugs will be available under what plans. One 
of the problems with that is, unlike Medicare, where the benefits are 
reasonably stable, known in advance, consistent from year to year, 
where the premium changes only a slight difference from year to year, 
when it comes to HMOs and private insurance companies, what will 
happen, as it has in the Medicare+Choice market, is every year people 
will be laid off

[[Page 16999]]

if the company is not making money in a particular area. The premium 
can be changed, the benefits can be changed at will, and despite the 
fact that in each of the last 4 or 5 years hundreds of thousands of 
people each year for a total of several million have withdrawn from the 
Medicare+Choice plans, that is, managed care for Medicare 
beneficiaries, despite that fact, that is the model that is being 
relied on under the Republican prescription drug plan.
  The bottom line is real simple. Having written the bill for the 
Republican majority, having watched it pass here in the House, now the 
pharmaceutical industry is out running ads under the name of other 
organizations, trying to persuade the American people that Republican 
Members of Congress who are marching in lockstep with the 
pharmaceutical industry should be congratulated by seniors, ostensibly 
for doing what seniors want, but in fact, doing what the pharmaceutical 
industry wants.
  I notice my colleague from Arkansas, a tireless advocate for seniors, 
is here, and at this time I would be happy to yield to the gentleman 
from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman 
from Maine (Mr. Allen), and not only for his great friendship but for 
his leadership in this Congress and in the time that we have served 
together on this issue.
  Here we are again, and it is a sad day in America. America is better 
than this. We can do better. We know how to do better. This issue is 
not something we do not know how to fix. We know what to do. This 
Congress is full of good people on both sides of the aisle. We know 
what to do about this issue. It is just simply not that complicated.
  Here we are today, late in the afternoon, the session is over with 
for the day. No more votes to be taken. We are not going to vote on 
anything that is going to change anybody's lives or very likely ever 
become law tomorrow. Nothing is happening on the floor of the United 
States House this week. Nothing happened last week. Very likely nothing 
is going to happen next week or the week after that.
  Here we are again, another year has passed. The end of the session is 
approaching, and the senior citizens in this country still do not have 
any way to even get a fair price on prescription medicine. They do not 
have a Medicare prescription drug plan, and we can do that. We know how 
to do it. We can figure out how to pay for it. Like I said, it is not 
complicated.
  Makes me think of a fellow I grew up around who used to get 
aggravated, used to say it would make him want a dip of snuff. That is 
how it affects me. Makes me want a dip of snuff. I cannot believe that 
all the good people in this House that serve their constituents, and 
they do it with a dedication and determination and in an honorable way, 
are willing to let another year pass and let the prescription drug 
companies of this country continue to rob the American people over and 
over again. It just absolutely astounds me, but nothing is happening. 
Nothing is happening.
  The American people pay three times as much for their medicine as any 
other Nation in the world. Why would we allow that to go on? Why would 
we let that happen? Why would this House let that happen? Why would 
this Congress let that happen?
  I just heard my good friend from Maine refer to the last presidential 
campaign, and the President himself swore that he would do everything 
he could, he was going to pass a prescription drug bill, he was going 
to get some relief for our seniors. We passed a bill, an amendment to 
the agriculture appropriations bill in December 2000, very late in the 
session, and it made it possible where the President of the United 
States, with the stroke of a pen, can allow the American people, not 
just senior citizens, all Americans to buy their medicines at the world 
price. That is all he has got to do is say let us do it, and we are 
still getting robbed.
  We are still paying three times as much. Every country in the world 
gets their medicine cheaper than we do. It is not right, it is not 
fair, and we can do something about it. We have already passed a law. 
All we need is for the President to tell the Food and Drug 
Administration, get it done. Where I come from that is value. We are 
not interested in folks that have got good excuses. We are interested 
in folks that get the job done, and that is what this is all about is 
getting the job done for the American people.
  The American people deserve better. We are a better people than this 
than to let something like this go on and on and on, and I think it is 
terrible that we are doing that.
  In the little town where I live, and it is full of wonderful people, 
we look after each other. We do not lock the doors or take the keys out 
of our cars. Somebody has got a little problem, we try to get over 
there and help them. If we had somebody going around, stealing from 
senior citizens, taking their money, taking their food, taking 
advantage of them in any other way, we would do something about it. If 
nothing else, we would run them out of town. Preferably we would have 
the law enforcement officials go find them, take them and put them in 
the State penitentiary and keep them for a while and see if we could 
not improve their way of making a living.
  We are letting that very same thing happen with the prescription drug 
companies in the United States and the companies that sell products in 
the United States. We are letting them rob the American people, and we 
are letting them rob the senior citizens of this country, and it goes 
on day after day after day, and nobody is willing to do anything about 
it. The President can do it with the stroke of a pen, and he refuses to 
do it.
  Why, I ask, would anybody sign up on a deal like this? This is 
corporate greed taken to the most disgusting level I can imagine. Why 
would we allow giant corporations to make great profits? And I want 
them to be profitable. They should be profitable. We want them to be 
successful.
  They ran an ad in the Congress Daily this morning, says pray for a 
miracle, and implied in that ad that generic drugs were bad and that 
they would never cure any disease. I can tell my colleagues this, no 
drug will cure a person if they cannot afford to buy it or if they get 
robbed, if they have to spend all their money for the drug and they 
cannot buy their food and cannot pay for their place to live and they 
cannot pay their utility bills because their drug bills are so high and 
everybody else in the world gets to buy it for a third of that. We 
better pray for a miracle if we keep letting these drug companies run 
over us in this country like they are now.
  I think it is an absolute, unmitigated, pitiful shame that we stand 
in this House of Representatives today and there is nobody else here 
willing to come down here and do the right thing for the American 
people. That is not the American way. That is not the reason that these 
members of this House were elected, and it is time that we do something 
about it.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, there are two words that 
sum up why we cannot get done here what needs to be done. Greed and 
money together are the answer.
  There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on September 16, just 
a couple of days ago. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs. The 
title is this: Drug Industry Steps Up Campaign to Boost Image Ahead of 
Elections. ``Here we go again, the pharmaceutical industry will spend 
millions of dollars on feel-good ads to boost their image before the 
election, and in the part of what they are doing, of course, not just 
boosting their own image but supporting Republican candidates.'' Let me 
read these two paragraphs.

                              {time}  1730

  ``More than $8 million has been committed to ads in recent months 
promoting nearly two dozen House candidates favoring industry-backed 
legislation and encouraging a Senate vote on the same bill, according 
to Charles Jarvis, chairman and chief executive of United Seniors 
Association, which is airing the spots. He acknowledged that most of 
the costs associated with the

[[Page 17000]]

effort, including an additional $4 million Internet and direct mail 
campaign, are supported by a `general educational grant from PhRMA.' 
All but a few of the two dozen or so United Seniors ads running this 
year thank Republican Members of Congress for supporting an industry-
backed bill to provide medicine to seniors.''
  It is money. It is greed. When there is as much money as we have in 
the pharmaceutical industry, and its obvious willingness to spend 
unlimited amounts of money on lobbyists, on campaign contributions and 
on television ads, we have in effect the people's House taken over by 
one industry group and blocking the steps that need to be taken.
  There is an article in the Hill, a local newspaper, and one of the 
things, and this is a column by Bruce Freed saying basically that the 
drug industry needs more transparency. On the one hand they will run 
ads, lobby people in Congress and say it takes $600-800 million to 
bring a drug to market, but you cannot find in our figures, we will not 
show you the accounting, we will not give you enough information about 
our costs to prove what we are saying. He is saying, look, there is so 
much lack of confidence now in large American corporations because of 
the way they have handled their accounting that this cannot be 
believed. The industry really needs more transparency.
  One pricing expert that he quotes says that prescription drugs are 
priced to generate the greatest profit to the companies. That is 
independent of any historical research and development spending on that 
product or any other product. That is not news to us, but it might be 
news to the American people because the industry has been so relentless 
in trying to say we need these profits, these profits that make us year 
after year the most profitable industry in the country. We need all of 
those profits in order to do research and development, but the cold, 
hard truth is they spend more on marketing than they do on research and 
in many respects they have become marketing companies.
  Find a drug, tweak it a little bit, get a new patent and spend 
millions in television advertising trying to persuade seniors and 
others that this particular medication is the one that they absolutely 
have to have. I have heard from doctors saying that more and more 
people are coming into their offices saying not what should I do for my 
condition, but saying I want this particular drug that I have seen on 
television. This is not a healthy development for our seniors and 
certainly not for this democracy.
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) 
makes an outstanding point. When I think of the Republican drug bill 
that was passed on this House floor a few months ago, and I think of 
the memos that were being sent around on the other side of the aisle, 
and basically what they were saying is that the American people are 
tired of being robbed by the drug companies, they may not know all of 
the details, but they know that they are being taken advantage of. They 
also know that the senior citizens are being put into great 
disadvantage, and some of them thrown into poverty because of the cost 
of prescription drugs. So just vote for something. Tell people when you 
go back home, I voted for a prescription drug bill. It does not amount 
to a hill of beans, but tell them that is what you did. That so-called 
prescription drug bill that was passed on this floor, and it was a 
deceitful thing, but what it makes me think of is a little restaurant 
which I saw in rural Arkansas. There were two restaurants close 
together in this community. One of them had been offering an all-you-
can-eat special, and he was really making life tough on the fellow down 
the street. So the fellow down the street decided he would be 
competitive. He put up a sign that said all you can eat for $100.
  That is about the way that this prescription drug bill that was 
passed by the Republicans works. Let us just make them think that they 
are going to get something, do not worry about the details. Just pass 
anything, put your name on the board and let us move on. Hope for the 
best.
  What they also do not tell us is that the United States taxpayers pay 
for the biggest part of the research and development that drug 
companies do. We want them to do research. Their profits are such that 
they can do research. There is no problem with that. But everybody 
ought to know that the American taxpayer pays for the biggest part of 
it. Why should we give these guys such a special deal? This is 
absolutely a ridiculous situation.
  On the floor of this House just a few weeks ago, we had a very close, 
highly contentious vote on trade. I believe in trade. I think we ought 
to trade across borders. The administration came down here and did all 
of the arm-twisting they could do to get that fast track trade bill 
passed; but yet when the President himself holds it within his power 
where the stroke of a pen or instructions from him to the Food and Drug 
Administration will allow us to fair-trade drugs in this country and 
get a good price for our people, he refuses to do it. What is good 
about that? Nothing. This is corporate greed at its most ridiculous 
level. We should not allow this to go on.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman is really talking about is 
what we often call reimportation, and that is legislation which has 
been passed that would allow drugs to be reimported from Canada. Just 
to give an example, from a recent bus trip up in Maine where a group of 
seniors went over the border to Canada, got their prescriptions filled 
by a Canadian physician, 25 people saved $1,600 in one bus trip.
  Just to give one example of a critical drug, Tamoxifen is a drug for 
breast cancer, and many women who are going through a fight against 
breast cancer do not need to be fighting for their pocketbooks as well. 
Tamoxifen in Maine costs $112-114 for a month's supply. In Canada, it 
is about $13. There is a 10-1 differential for Tamoxifen for fighting 
breast cancer.
  When we look at other countries, the prices are much lower elsewhere. 
Why? Because the governments in those countries do not allow their 
seniors to be taken advantage of. All of those governments one way or 
another set some kind of cap on what the pharmaceutical industry can 
pay.
  We have the anomaly here in the United States, Medicare, 39 million 
beneficiaries, the largest health care plan in the United States, they 
do not have prescription drug coverage, they do not have the Federal 
Government negotiating lower prices for them. They are on their own.
  For those of us who are still working and have some sort of health 
insurance, we get our prescription drug coverage through our health 
insurer. No matter who our health insurer is, that insurer is 
negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies to get a reduced price. 
How much, we do not always know, but they are getting a reduced price 
from the pharmaceutical industry. It is a scandal that seniors cannot 
get the best price in the country. They are part of the largest group. 
They use the most medications. We ought to have the kind of leverage 
over price that will give seniors the price that they are leveraged, 
that their marketing position deserves. But when it comes to developing 
a Medicare prescription drug plan of any kind down here in the 
Congress, the first rule is do no harm to the pharmaceutical industry's 
profits.
  So we have seniors dying, not getting the care they want. We have 
seniors who cannot afford food and paying the rent simply because their 
prescription drug costs are too high. They simply cannot do it, and the 
result is that they are in trouble. But the instinct of many down here 
who receive corporate campaign contributions from the industry is 
protect the industry first.
  We are a long way of being done from campaign contributions in this 
particular election cycle, but so far, according to the Center for 
Responsive Politics, nearly $16 million has been donated to political 
candidates and parties during this election cycle, 2001-2002, by the 
pharmaceutical industry, 74 percent of it so far to Republicans. If 
Members wonder why we are not getting this job done, that is the 
reason.

[[Page 17001]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) to 
explain this particular chart.
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, this is a copy of an ad that was run in 
Congress Daily this morning. It is an attempt to convince Members to do 
everything they can to discourage generic drug use and to help the 
pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country continue to be able to 
overcharge and rob the American people.
  At first glance Members can see it has, of course, the words at the 
top, Pray for a Miracle. That is one thing in this ad that I agree 
with. I think that we should, indeed, pray for a miracle because I 
think that is what it will take on the floor of this House and in this 
Congress and with this administration to achieve a situation that will 
allow us to let the American people buy their medicine at a fair price 
and to make sure that the senior citizens of this country have the 
necessary medicine that they need to stay healthy, have a decent 
lifestyle, and to not have to go to bed hungry at night because they 
had to spend all of their money on medicine and could not afford to buy 
any food. That is an idea that I think the American people will be 
ashamed of. We are a better country than that. We are a better people 
than that, and we are a better Congress than that because we represent 
good people.
  It is time, and I say that over and over again, I say it because I 
believe it, it is time for this Congress to present to this 
administration the opportunity to do the right thing, to do the right 
thing and let the American people get a fair deal when they buy their 
medicine, to let our senior citizens have the same opportunity to have 
a fulfilling life and not get robbed when they have to go buy their 
medicine.
  I also want to make one point in a very strong way. We need to 
recognize the community pharmacies in this country. These people have 
to pay these exorbitant prices, make almost no profit, scramble like 
crazy to try to stay in business, and sell their products to their 
customers as cheap as they can, and they do heroic work trying to 
provide this expensive medicine at the lowest possible price to our 
senior citizens, and I think they need to be recognized for the great 
work that they do.

                              {time}  1745

  I thank the gentleman for his comments. I might call attention again 
to that advertisement. It says, ``Pray for a miracle because generic 
drugs will never cure him.'' It is an ad run by PhRMA, the 
pharmaceutical industry association or the association for the brand-
name prescription drugs.
  The reason that ad is being run right now is that the Senate has 
passed a bill, basically, to encourage more competition and, therefore, 
lower prices between the generic industry and the brand-name 
pharmaceutical industry. A lot of important drugs have gone off-patent 
lately and some more are to follow and the generic companies are 
providing exactly the same medication, exactly the same medication; but 
typically once they are in the market, once they are able to compete, 
the price of the brand-name drops precipitously and prescription drugs 
go down.
  We have the same kind of bill, bipartisan bill, that is here in the 
House. It is called the Prescription Drug Fair Competition Act, H.R. 
5272. But the Republican majority, the Republican leadership is not 
willing to bring this to the floor. On the Democratic side of the 
aisle, we are going to start a discharge petition to bring this bill to 
the floor, to see if we can get enough signatures so we can actually 
have a vote to do what the Senate did.
  Let me just say a couple of things. In recent years, the brand-name 
companies have really been gaming the whole patent system to keep 
generics off the market for months and even years beyond the time that 
it was intended by Congress when it passed legislation in 1984. The 
bill that we are going to try to get to the floor on the Democratic 
side here is intended to prevent abuses of the existing law and allow 
competitive generic drugs to reach the marketplace more quickly. The 
Congressional Budget Office has looked at this bill and has estimated 
that this bill, the Prescription Drug Fair Competition Act, would 
reduce total spending on prescription drugs by $60 billion, or 1.3 
percent, over the next 10 years. That does not include the enormous 
savings that would accrue if a Medicare prescription drug benefit is 
enacted.
  There have been so many ways that the brand-name pharmaceutical 
industry has really lifted the cost of prescription drugs. When there 
is a patent lawsuit going on, and it is easy to get a patent lawsuit 
going on, then they have been able to basically get repeated delays so 
that the FDA is not able to approve a generic application for sometimes 
30 months; and sometimes they can stack these 30-month periods one 
after the other and make the delays run for years. This is a bill that 
would provide early resolution of some patent disputes. It would also 
prevent these collusive agreements that sometimes the brand-name 
companies have paid generic companies not to bring a competing drug to 
market. The result of that is the generic company gets some money, the 
pharmaceutical company, the brand-name pharmaceutical is able to charge 
much higher prices for an additional 6 months or longer, and the only 
people who are really seriously harmed are the consumers, the public.
  This legislation would prevent that from happening. This is good 
legislation. There is some Republican support for this bill. It ought 
to be something we could do following the lead of the other body. We 
ought to be able to do this, but right now we are sitting here not 
doing anything on appropriations bills.
  I told people back home during the August recess that when we came 
back in September we were going to be very busy because we had only 
passed five of 13 appropriations bills and we would be working hard on 
that. We are now almost at the end of our third week since we came 
back, and we have not seen a sign of an appropriations bill anywhere in 
this Chamber. They are not about to bring up any of the appropriations 
bills, it looks like. So we are not doing the work we were sent here to 
do. We are not helping our seniors with prescription drugs. It is a 
sorry state of affairs. A large part of the reason has to be that the 
pharmaceutical industry, at least with respect to prescription drugs, a 
large part of the reason is so much money is being spent on lobbying, 
on campaign contributions and on ads.
  You cannot watch television without seeing ads from the 
pharmaceutical industry. Now they will not just be feel-good ads with 
people running through fields of clover, but they will be ads touting 
particular candidates; and you can be quite sure that if they are 
praising a candidate, it is probably a Republican in most cases and if 
they are attacking a candidate, it is probably a Democrat in almost all 
cases. As a result, the people's will, what people over and over again 
want in Arkansas and Maine and around this country, a Medicare 
prescription drug benefit, a discount on their prescription drugs, the 
right to get medicines from Canada or other countries with lower rates, 
all of these approaches are being stymied and the will of the people in 
this country is being frustrated by a majority that is locked into the 
pharmaceutical industry and doing the bidding of the pharmaceutical 
industry. It is a national scandal.
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Maine is absolutely right. 
It is a national scandal. A few months ago, we had these corporate 
scandals. We were having, it seemed like, one or two a week. We had 
corporations that had been caught not telling the truth. Apparently we 
had corporations that had some executives that might have even taken 
money that did not belong to them. We found out all of a sudden that 
these companies did not have the assets they said they had. They were 
not worth what they said they were worth. They could not do what they 
said they could do.
  We just rushed to the floor of this House, we could not get here 
quick enough, and passed a law that said we are going to punish them 
some more. And we should have. They deserve to be punished. Every day 
now you pick up

[[Page 17002]]

the paper and you see another corporate executive is being charged by 
the Department of Justice for breaking the law and they are making him 
a criminal. If they broke the law, they deserve to be treated as 
criminals, and they deserve whatever comes to them. That is for the law 
to decide.
  But for the prescription drug manufacturers in this country and those 
that sell their products in this country to continue to rob and cheat 
the senior citizens of this country should be against the law. It 
should not be allowed. It is just as wrong as those corporate 
executives that betrayed their stockholders and betrayed their 
employees and betrayed people that invested in their companies. It is 
just as criminal for these drug companies to cheat and take advantage 
of and rob our senior citizens and the sick people of this country and 
the working people of this country that cannot do anything about it. 
This is just as wrong as these corporate scandals that we have. And we 
rushed to this floor. You could hardly stop folks from coming down here 
and talking about how bad it was and what a terrible thing. And it was. 
But these folks are stealing more money than all of those companies 
stole or misappropriated or misused or lied about or whatever it is 
they did.
  What the drug companies steal from the senior citizens of this 
country on a daily basis is absolutely overwhelming. The $16 million 
that they spend on campaigns, that is not even walking-around money. 
That is not even soda pop money for these folks. Yet they are doing it 
day after day after day.
  I believe the gentleman from Maine referred to the idea that the drug 
companies had decided they needed to improve their image. Boy, you are 
right about that. If there is anybody in this country that ought to 
improve their image, it would be the prescription drug manufacturers. 
They have got a sorry image, as far as I am concerned. I will say once 
again, America is better than this. The American people are better than 
this. This Congress is better than this, than to let it keep going on 
and on.
  Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I will make just 
one final comment. We have been talking a lot about prescription drugs 
for seniors this evening and what a serious problem it is for Medicare 
beneficiaries because they do not have a Medicare prescription drug 
benefit at all. But back home in Maine what we are finding is that the 
small business community is now getting hit by very steep increases in 
their health insurance premiums. Small business men and women in my 
State are seeing health insurance premium increases of 30 percent, 40 
percent, sometimes 50 percent; and this is the third successive year in 
which that is happening. The viability of many small businesses in 
Maine is really being threatened by rapidly rising prescription drug 
costs because that is the major component that is driving up their 
health insurance premiums.
  This is a big and complicated issue. The fairness of our health care 
system, the ability of people to get access to the health care they 
need is a national issue of enormous importance, and it is one that is 
being neglected in this House because we are paying far too much 
attention to the industry itself and not to the people. I want to thank 
the gentleman from Arkansas for participating in this Special Order 
tonight.

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