[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 504]
[From the U.S. 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. 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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