Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and General Government Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, first let me thank my colleague and friend from Maine. If you ask the American people from one corner of this country to the other, what are they worried about, what are they concerned about, what you have just talked about is the top 1, 2, 3 issue: the accessibility and affordability of health insurance, time and again.

Some of us have been in a predicament in life when someone we love was very sick and had no health insurance. People never forget it as long as they live--people who live every single day with that prospect of not having health insurance or it is so darned expensive they can't pay for it.

I thank the Senator from Maine for the comments he made regarding the efforts by this administration to undermine and sabotage health insurance. It is one thing to say you are against ObamaCare, you are against the Affordable Care Act; the obvious question is, What would you replace it with? When given a chance, the other side of the aisle had nothing. That is why, thankfully, we stopped their efforts to repeal it.

You and I, and everyone on this side of the aisle, is open to talking about making it better, make it work more efficiently, and reach more people in a more efficient way. But just saying we are going to get rid of it and then we will talk about it later is not an answer. I thank the Senator for the comments that he made.

Madam President, I am going to address the second issue that comes up when you talk to people across America who are concerned with it, and I will start with a question: Have you ever, ever, in your whole life, seen an ad on television for prescription drugs--ever? If the answer is no, I know one thing for sure: You don't own a television because the average American sees nine--nine--television prescription drug ads every single day. They see nine every day.

You know what I am talking about; they mumble as fast as they can: If you take this you may die; don't take it if you are allergic to it. All of those ads, all of those names of all those drugs--it took about 20 times for me to watch the XARELTO ad to get to the point where I could spell XARELTO. I am not sure I have it right still.

But here is what it is all about. Why does pharma--pharmaceutical companies--spend so much money on television advertising? What is this all about? You can't buy most of these drugs over the counter; you need a doctor. Here is why they do it: They believe, if they keep suggesting to you that this is a drug that might help you, when you go to the doctor you will ask him or her: Doctor, should I be taking XARELTO?

Well, the doctor may say to you that you don't need it--or may say to you that you can take a generic that is a lot cheaper and does the same thing. But in many, many cases, the doctor says ``Let me write a prescription for XARELTO for you,'' and what we have happening across the United States is the increasing cost of healthcare for everyone, which is being driven by the increasing costs of prescription drug prices.

You see, in the United States of America, there is no control over the increases in prescription drug pricing. So these companies that spend billions of dollars advertising on television end up getting more of their drugs prescribed, making more money, raising their prices, and it goes on and on, and we see the cost of healthcare increasing.

How many countries in the world today allow drug companies to advertise on television the way they do in the United States? There are two--the United States and New Zealand. That is it. What does the American Medical Association--the doctors of America--have to say about this television advertising of prescription drugs? They say it is a bad idea because what it does is incentivize first the patients and then the doctors to prescribe more expensive drugs than are necessary, and that drives up the cost of healthcare. So I decided to try to address this.

There are lots of ways you could address it. I decided one of the things we might do is simply do something that is fair and open and honest: Ask the drug companies in their ads to disclose the price of the drug. Simply that: How much does it cost? Put it in the ad. Well, you might be surprised.

Here is one for you. Have you seen the ads for the drug HUMIRA? HUMIRA. I bet you have. I have--plenty. It was a drug originally designed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, but then they found that it also could impact psoriasis. Most of us know, psoriasis is a skin problem. For many of us, it is just a tiny little patch on the elbow; for some people, it is more serious. But they now advertise that HUMIRA could be used for psoriasis. That is good to know.

Here is what they don't tell you. Do you know what HUMIRA costs? Do you know how much it costs each month for HUMIRA? $5,500. They don't advertise that because, for $5,000 a month, I think I can live with that patch on my elbow.

What I think, and many agree, is that we ought to move to the point where the pharmaceutical companies tell us the cost of the drug in their advertisement. That is not unreasonable, is it? In fact, it is so reasonable that--hang onto your hats--President Donald Trump and this Senator happen to agree on it.

The President, at a press conference a couple months ago, said: Let's have pharma advertise in their advertising the cost of the drug.

I thought to myself, Well, that is an issue that I have been working on for a while. I agree with the administration. Maybe we can do it together.

So I went to my colleague and friend, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and I asked him: Will you cosponsor an amendment to the bill on the floor today that gives appropriations to the Food and Drug Administration to support asking pharma to disclose their prices on their advertising?

We introduced this amendment, and, frankly, with 76 percent of the American people supporting the idea, we have an interesting coalition: Durbin, Democrat of Illinois; Grassley, Republican of Iowa; President Donald Trump; and--I came to learn last night--the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Azar. He called me. I don't know him. I have never met him. But he said: I want to tell you that we support your amendment, the Durbin-Grassley amendment for the disclosure of the cost of drugs. We think it is a good thing. We think it will start to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. That is a great thing. It turns out the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration also supports it.

So now we have kind of an amazing coalition: Democrats and Republicans--here in the Senate, as well as in the White House, the administration--coming together. How often does that happen around here? Not that often. Sadly, it doesn't. So let's seize this opportunity.

I am asking those who are managing this bill to include this language--this appropriations language in this amendment in the bill as a step toward giving us some control over the increasing cost of prescription drugs.

Pharma hates this amendment like the devil hates holy water. They don't want to tell people that HUMIRA costs $5,500 a month. It kind of spoils your ad when you are talking about psoriasis, and it comes out to be over $5,000 a month for their drug. So they don't want to tell you. They hope it gets lost in the system. I think it is better for Americans to know what they are getting into.

Why is pharma afraid to tell the consumers how much their drugs cost? We shouldn't wait to be surprised when we go to the pharmacy, when we stand by the register to pay for what we are buying. People have a right to know. You know the price of a car before you buy it. Don't you? How about the price of that washer and dryer? I looked at those over the weekend with my wife. We know those prices right now. Why shouldn't we know the price of those drugs?

So I am calling on my colleagues--we have amendments Nos. 3611 and 3612. Let's put them on this bill. Let's do something. Let's do the first thing we have done this year--the very first thing we have done this year to address the serious concern which Americans have on the cost of prescription drugs.

I see my colleague and friend, Senator Grassley, is here. I thank him for joining me on this amendment.

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