21st Century Cures Bill
Press Release
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Madam President, I rise in strong opposition to this legislation, the so-called 21st Century Cures Act. While I appreciate the work Senator Murray, Senator Alexander, and others have done on this legislation, I cannot in good conscience vote on it in its current form.
It goes without saying that everybody, whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent, wants to find cures to the terrible diseases that are impacting the lives of millions of people, such as cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and the
terrible illnesses that strike children. We all want to find cures for those illnesses, but that is not really what this debate is about. The debate we are having on this bill is simple: Do we continue to cave in to the demands of the pharmaceutical industry--an industry that is making recordbreaking profits by charging the American people, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs--or do we have the courage to stand up to the CEOs of big drug companies whose prices are so high that one out of five Americans who gets a prescription from a doctor is unable to afford to fill that prescription? Let's be clear.
If you cannot afford to fill that prescription, you will likely get sicker, and in some cases, you are going to die.
It is incomprehensible to me that we have a major bill dealing with prescription drugs, and yet we are running away from the most important issue that impacts millions of people and that the American people feel very strongly about, and that is the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and the outrageously high prices our people are being forced to pay. That is the issue on which we must focus.
If we were really serious about finding cures for life-threatening illnesses and diseases, maybe--just maybe--we would adequately fund the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.
Over the last 12 years, medical research has been cut by over 20 percent after adjusting for inflation. Even if this bill passes, funding for NIH will still be roughly $7 billion less this year than what it was in 2004. Meanwhile, over the same time period--just to put this in context--the top 1 percent has received over $1 trillion in tax breaks. In other words, we cannot fund the agencies that are trying to find cures for diseases, but we can give unbelievably significant tax breaks to the 1 percent.
Let me very briefly give a few major reasons this bill should be defeated.
No. 1, as I said a moment ago, the most important prescription drug- related crisis facing our country right now is the skyrocketing price of prescription drugs. This bill does not even deal with that issue.
How can we talk about a bill dealing with the pharmaceutical industry without addressing the elephant in the room, which is the fact that we pay the highest prices in the world for medicine? And in many cases, those costs are soaring.
In America today, one out of five people between the ages of 19 and 64 cannot afford to fill their prescriptions. Hundreds of thousands of seniors are forced to cut their pills in half because the medicine they need is just too expensive. Let me give just a few examples.
Since 2007, Mylan has raised the price of a package of EpiPens by 461 percent while rewarding its CEO with a 671-percent increase in compensation. Maybe, just maybe, we might want to address that issue.
Last year, Turing Pharmaceuticals increased the price of Daraprim by 5,000 percent overnight. It went from $13.50 to $750 for just one pill.
While thousands of children in Flint have been poisoned by lead, Valeant increased the price of the drug to treat this disease 2,700 percent in a single year--from $7,100 to about $27,000.
Meanwhile, at a time when 35 million Americans cannot afford the medicine they need, the drug companies are making enormous profits and providing extremely generous compensation packages to their executives.
Last year, fellow Americans, while you were paying more and more for prescription drugs you desperately needed, the 5 major drug companies made over $50 billion in profit--$50 billion in profit, 5 drug companies--while the top 10 pharmaceutical executives received over $320 million in compensation. In fact, the prescription drug companies literally have money to burn. This year, the pharmaceutical industry spent $131 million to defeat Proposition 61, a ballot initiative in California that would have lowered average drug prices by at least 24 percent for millions of people. They spent $131 million in California to defeat a proposal that would have lowered drug prices.
How does it happen that the pharmaceutical companies can charge any price they want for prescription drugs? The answer is clear: The prescription drug industry, along with Wall Street, is the most powerful political force in America. I have been fighting the greed of the prescription drug industry for decades, and as far as I can tell, the pharmaceutical industry always win. They never lose. They win, but the American people lose.
Since 1998, the pharmaceutical industry has spent more than $3 billion in lobbying all over this place. There are hundreds and hundreds of lobbyists telling Members of Congress what the pharmaceutical industry wants, and they have made hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. They currently have over 1,200 lobbyists on their payrolls here in Washington, including former leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties. That is why the pharmaceutical industry makes huge profits while the American people cannot afford the medicine they need.
It would be one thing if these outrageous price increases were happening in other major countries. Are these price increases taking place all over the world? The answer is, they are not. In 2013, we spent nearly 40 percent more per person on prescription drugs than Canada and five times as much as in Denmark. How is it that the cost of prescription drugs in Denmark, Canada, the UK, and France is significantly lower than it is in the United States? That is an issue, and it is high time we begin discussing it. For example, it costs $730 for a 90-day supply of Crestor--which is used to treat high cholesterol--in the United States but just $160 in Canada. Americans with heartburn pay $736 for a 90-day supply of Nexium, but that same product costs $214 in Canada. Americans with arthritis are forced to pay $895 for Celebrex, but it costs just $280 in Canada.
During this recent campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump promised, among many other things, to lower the prices of prescription drugs.
That is what Mr. Trump said. He promised that he would ``allow consumers access to imported, safe and dependable drugs from overseas to bring more options to consumers.'' He also promised to require Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices-- something that is banned by law today.
Here is what President-Elect Trump said while on the campaign trail:
We are not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Can you believe it? We pay about $300 billion more than we are supposed to, than if we negotiated the price. So there's $300 billion on day one we solve.
Since President-Elect Trump supports requiring Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower prices, which is an idea that many people in this body also support, and since Mr. Trump believes we should be able to reimport low-cost medicines from Canada and other countries, I am quite confident that all of my Republican colleagues will support an amendment in my hands that will do exactly what Mr. Trump said he would accomplish as President. Think about what you can do to pave the way for Mr. Trump when he comes into office. You will have already satisfied one of his major campaign pledges.
Therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion to concur with an amendment be set aside, and I ask unanimous consent for the immediate consideration of a motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 34 with a further amendment that I send to the desk.
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Mr. President, two points. First of all, let mereiterate that is for inflation-adjusted dollars, not nominal dollars.
The funding for the National Institutes of Health this year will still be roughly $7 billion less than what it received in 2004. That is point No. 1.
Point No. 2--and I will yield briefly to my friend from Missouri--did I hear him say that he is supportive of reimportation and having the Federal Government--Medicare--negotiate prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry? That is what I thought I heard him say.
I yield to my friend.
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I am very supportive, he is dead right. But I was
wondering if my friend--when he said we are going to get to it next year, what does that mean? Does that mean you will be pushing the ability of Americans and pharmacists and distributors to be able to benefit from unfettered free trade and buy low-cost medicines and some of the same drugs sold in Canada and the UK? And will you also, as Mr.
Trump made the point, allow Medicare to negotiate for lower prices? Is that something on which we can expect our Republican friends to support the President-elect?
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My friend is exactly right. Neither a Republican nor a Democratic administration will have the guts to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry.
Today, if you have a salad, it is likely you are going to get your salad with tomatoes and lettuce that are from Mexico or some other country with very poorly inspected farms. That is no problem, but somehow or another, we are led to believe that it is impossible to bring in brand-name medicine from Canada or the United Kingdom or France, that it just cannot be done. It is beyond belief that anybody with a straight face believes that to be true. Clearly, this is what the pharmaceutical industry wants us to believe, but I hope that my friend from Missouri will not accept what the pharmaceutical industry tells us and understands that the next Secretary of HHS should certify that with proper procedures, we can reimport medicine.
I yield to my friend.
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I know what a tomato looks like, too, but you don't know what kind of pesticide was used or how that tomato was grown. The idea that we cannot get a product from across the border safely really doesn't pass the laugh test, frankly. This is one of the things the pharmaceutical industry has been pushing. We have unfettered free trade for fish, for vegetables, for meat from all over the world, but somehow, from Canada or the UK or France--we cannot safely bring medicine into this country at a fraction of the price our pharmacists are now paying. Frankly, I would say to the Senator from Missouri, that does not pass the laugh test, and I hope we can work together. Clearly, we want the medicine to come in safely, but I think we can do that, and I look forward to doing that.
I yield.
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I agree with the last statement the Senator from Missouri made.
Let me give another reason why I am opposed to this bill. Incredibly, this legislation makes it easier for prescription drug companies to get away with fraud. Fraud is something the major drug companies have been perpetuating on the American people for a number of years.
It is not widely known, but it should be known that since 1991, drug companies have paid over $35 billion in fines or resettlements for fraud and misconduct--$35 billion--but instead of cracking down on pharmaceutical company fraud, this bill actually legalizes the fraudulent behavior of some of the big drug companies.
Specifically, under this bill, pharmaceutical companies would be allowed to promote unapproved uses of drugs to insurance companies--a practice which is currently illegal. Why would we allow the pharmaceutical industry the opportunity to market drugs to insurance companies for uses that haven't been approved by the FDA? This is a major problem. Let me give a few examples.
In 2013, the Justice Department ordered Johnson & Johnson, one of the major pharmaceutical companies in the country, to pay $2.2 billion in fines for ``recklessly promoting drugs for uses that have not been proven to be safe and effective.'' According to the U.S. attorney handling the case, Johnson & Johnson's ``promotion of Risperdal for unapproved uses threatened the most vulnerable populations of our society: children, the elderly, and those with developmental disabilities. Congress rightfully determined that this is unacceptable and made it illegal, but under this bill, it could become legal. That is wrong.
In 2010, AstraZeneca pharmaceuticals paid $520 million to resolve allegations that it illegally marketed the antipsychotic drug Seroquel for uses not approved as safe and effective by the FDA.
In 2009, Eli Lilly was fined over $1.4 billion for its off-label promotion of another antipsychotic drug known as Zyprexa. According to Federal investigators, Eli Lily's illegal activities increased patients' costs, threatened their safety, and negatively affected the delivery of health care services to over 9 million military members, retirees, and their families who rely on health care.
We need to make it harder for the pharmaceutical industry to commit fraud, but instead this bill allows the pharmaceutical industry to, in fact, commit even more fraud. That is unacceptable.
Third, let's be clear: This bill would cut Medicare and Medicaid by a billion dollars. Millions of senior citizens are in desperate need of Medicare and Medicaid.
Thanks to Medicare, today more than 48 million seniors and 9 million people with disabilities have health insurance coverage through Medicare, and over 73 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid. The last thing we should be doing today is cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
We need to make health care more affordable to senior citizens, the disabled, and low-income families with children--not more expensive.
Finally, this bill--and this is quite significant--cuts $3.5 billion from the Affordable Care Act's prevention fund to prevent Alzheimer's, diabetes, suicide, heart disease, and lead poisoning.
Instead of cutting Medicare and Medicaid, instead of cutting funds for health care programs, we should be demanding that the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. We should not be cutting life-and-death programs for the most vulnerable people in this country.
I say to my colleagues, if you want to lower the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, vote against this bill. If you are opposed to legalizing pharmaceutical fraud that can endanger the lives of many Americans, please vote against this bill. If you are opposed to cutting Medicare and Medicaid, vote against this bill. If you want to prevent cuts to programs that would prevent Alzheimer's disease and many other diseases, vote against this bill.
It is time to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and stand with the American people who are tired of being ripped off by this extremely greedy industry.
With that, I yield the floor.
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