Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, June is Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month--an opportunity to join the global conversation about this equal opportunity killer, Alzheimer's.
Everyone with a brain is at risk to develop Alzheimer's. Worldwide right now there are 47 million people living with Alzheimer's and with other dementias. Without a change, these numbers are expected to grow to 76 million people globally with Alzheimer's by the year 2030.
In 1998, my mother passed away from Alzheimer's. That is the year that I created the bipartisan Congressional Alzheimer's Task Force. The reason I did it was that it is very hard--as people who have an Alzheimer's patient in their family know--to deal with this disease while my mother had it. But for me, it became something very important, something that I felt that Congress had a responsibility to deal with. For 13 years, my mother just stayed in our living room, being cared for by my father. My mother was quite fortunate because my father had been a milkman. The right arm of a milkman carrying milk bottles for decades is the strongest right arm you can have. My father could care for my mother. My father could keep my mother in our home. But not every family has a strong right arm of a milkman.
Keeping an Alzheimer's patient at home is a difficult task. We have to accept the fact that statistically, we now have more than 5 million Americans with Alzheimer's. Let me say that again: 5 million Americans, as we gather here on the Senate floor, have Alzheimer's in our country, but that is before all the baby boomers have retired. By the time all of the baby boomers in America have retired, 15 million of them are going to have Alzheimer's. Like my family, someone else in each one of those families is going to have Alzheimer's as well because they will be the family caregiver. That will be about 30 million people by the time all the baby boomers have retired whose principal reality in life will be this one disease.
How big is this disease as a drain on our country? This year we are going to spend in Medicare and Medicaid dollars $153 billion on Alzheimer's patients.
I will say that again. This year in America, with 5 million people with the disease, we are going to spend $153 billion. How big is that number? While we are debating the Defense bill for our country--how big is the Defense bill to protect our entire country here and overseas? It is $560 billion. One disease, Alzheimer's, is going to cost us $153 billion. By the time all 15 million baby boomers have the disease, the amount of Federal money in Medicare and Medicaid that we will be spending will be equal to the entire defense budget of our country. That is obviously not sustainable.
We have to find a cure for Alzheimer's not just for our country but for every other country in the world. We have to be the leader. Our caregivers are the heroes today, but even heroes need help. As the true neurological wasting effects take hold of the next generation of Alzheimer's patients, the costs to our society will mount unless we make the smart investments to treat and defeat this disease. We have an opportunity here in the Senate to provide the leadership.
For every $27,000 in 2015 that we are going to spend from the U.S. Senate on Alzheimer's out of the Medicare and Medicaid budget, the National Institutes of Health invests $100 in trying to find a cure. That is right. You heard me correctly. For every $27,000 of Federal money this year on an Alzheimer's patient, we are spending $100 to try to find a cure.
The NIH budget has to increase, and it has to increase dramatically because in the long run we cannot balance the Federal budget if in 30 years one disease is going to consume as much Federal money as the entire defense budget in our country.
Every 67 seconds, someone new in this country develops Alzheimer's. In my State of Massachusetts, 12 percent of all seniors have Alzheimer's.
We need a breakthrough in research. Research is medicine's field of dreams from which we harness the findings that give hope to families so that one day children will have to look to the history books to find that there ever was such a disease as Alzheimer's.
Right now is not the time to cut funding at the National Institutes of Health. They are not only the National Institutes of Health, they are also the national institutes of hope, and we must give that hope to American families that we can find a cure. We cannot cut that budget. We cannot allow sequestration to come in and slash the NIH budget once again. In 2015, NIH has buying power that is 20 percent lower than it was 10 years ago. This is at a point where it should be ramped up 20 percent higher, not lower.
This is a debate which we should be having. The terrorist call that people fear is that some doctor will call their house to them that yet another member of their family has Alzheimer's or some other tragic disease.
We need to increase the NIH budget. We need to give that hope to American families. And that is why Senator Crapo and I worked to pass the Alzheimer's Accountability Act into law. It requires the Director of NIH to submit an annual budget directly to Congress outlining what resources are needed to meet the goal of preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease by 2025. That is why my colleagues, Senator Stabenow, Senator Collins, Senator Capito, and I introduced the Hope for Alzheimer's Act, which will allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive comprehensive care-planning services when they are diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That is also why Senator Wyden and I included the Independence at Home Program as part of the Affordable Care Act. This program allows chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries, such as those with Alzheimer's, to receive primary care services in the comfort of their home. Independence at Home allows teams of doctors and nurses to continue to care for severely ill Medicare patients in their home by bringing the house calls of the yesteryear physicians into the 21st century.
Just last week, some game-changing data was released on the success of the first year of this program. We learned that when implemented properly, the Independence at Home Program has the potential to save $21 billion of Medicare money over the next decade, and at the same time it also improves the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. This is a win-win situation. It is possible to design Medicare so that it works smarter, saves money, and improves the lives of beneficiaries.
Patients want to be cared for in their living rooms, not in the emergency room. That is what my father, John Markey the milkman, was able to provide for my mother with Alzheimer's. That is what the Independence at Home Program does. It is a program where nurse practitioners, physicians, and nursing homes are able to say: We are going to help to keep your loved one at home. We will give you the help that makes that possible.
Independence at Home is steering our health care system toward a focus of quality and not simply the quantity of care.
As we build a future free of Alzheimer's disease, Congress and the American people need a blueprint on how to be more effective at prioritizing Federal resources to reach our goal. When America makes a plan, America can do great things. We need an action plan to cure Alzheimer's and to care for those who suffer from it.
In the 1960s, President Kennedy called for a mission to the Moon, and we accomplished great things to make that happen. In the 21st century, it is not a mission to the Moon, it is a mission to the mind which is our challenge, and we must make the same kind of investment in research that was made in the 1960s.
We did not allow the Soviet Union to dominate. We cannot allow this disease to devastate 15 million lives with Alzheimer's in this baby boom generation. The legacy we should be leaving is that we found the cure. It was first identified more than 100 years ago. We now have to make sure that our legacy in the 21st century is that we have been able to build the momentum to fund the research that ensures families in our country have hope.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
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