Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Tennessee for his kind words and thank him for his leadership on so many issues. He is chairman of the health and education authorizing committee, and we also serve together on Appropriations Committee. It has been a real pleasure to work with him over the years on so many issues but particularly on the issue of medical research.
It would surprise a lot of people--maybe even disappoint them--to know how bipartisan we are when it comes to this issue. I can say, on behalf of Senator Murray on our side of the aisle and Senator Blunt on the other side of the aisle, that he and I have created a little team, a little cabal, that watches the authorization and appropriations bills.
This will be the fourth consecutive year that we have had 5 percent real growth at the National Institutes of Health. As Dr. Collins--one of the great living Americans--has told us, this is going to reap dividends, as the Senator described earlier in his speech, in terms of breakthroughs when it comes to dealing with suffering and disease and early death that we can do something about in our lifetimes.
I don't quarrel with the Senator's conclusion in his speech that we are talking about the direct appropriations bills here, the direct spending of the government, and we are keeping that at a slow rate of increase.
On the mandatory side of the programs where we see dramatic increase, part of it has to do with the cost of healthcare in America. That cost continues to go up. One of the drivers of the cost of healthcare, according to insurance companies and others, are the costs of prescription drugs. They are going up dramatically.
We had a hearing yesterday, and a young mother came to tell us the story of losing her son who, I think, was about 23 years of age. No, I know exactly; I remember now. He was 26 years of age. He no longer qualified to be on the family health insurance. He was diabetic, and he went to buy his insulin at the drugstore and was told it would cost him $1,300. He wasn't going to get paid for 4 days, so he put it off. During that period of time, he died from complications of diabetes.
The cost of insulin at $1,300 is incredible to me. This is a drug that has been available for decades, and that it would go up in cost so dramatically that he would be unable to afford it and lose his life is scandalous in this country.
I know the Senator senses this, as well, and believes, as I do, that we want pharmaceutical companies to be profitable, we want them to do research, and we want them to invest in new drugs. But we cannot step back and ignore when their pricing is out of control, and in many instances that is the case.
I have said before on the floor--I have asked the people who gathered here to follow our speeches: How many of you have never seen an ad on television for a drug? If you held up your hand, I know one thing for sure: You don't own a television because the average American sees nine drug ads a day--a day.
Why do pharmaceutical companies buy nine drug ads a day for every American to consume at $6 billion a year? So that, eventually, we will become so familiar with the names of their drugs that we will ask our doctors to prescribe them, and doctors do prescribe them when the patients ask. Sometimes the patient may not need that drug. The patient may be able to deal with a generic drug that is much cheaper, but the pharmaceutical companies want us to reach the point at which we know these drugs by name and ask for them, and the doctors prescribe them.
The most heavily prescribed drug in America today--here is a name you are familiar with: HUMIRA. Of course, if you turn on the television, you see HUMIRA, which was originally designed to deal with rheumatoid arthritis and is now being advertised as a cure for psoriasis. What they don't tell you is the information we put at the bottom of this display: HUMIRA costs $5,500 a month. Did you know that? You would never know it, listening to their ads because they don't disclose it.
It is pretty simple, right? If you knew HUMIRA cost $5,500 a month, you might not even consider it for that little red patch of psoriasis on your elbow. If you knew that some of these drugs they are talking about, like XARELTO--it took about 10 times for me to figure out how to pronounce it and spell it, but they keep coming at you. It is a blood thinner, and it costs $500 or $600 a month. All of these disclosures made to consumers would give them more information to make a decision and perhaps think twice before they ask for a very expensive prescription drug.
So I have this bipartisan amendment pending on this bill, which would say to the Trump administration and the Department of Health and Human Services: Develop the rules for putting prices of these drugs on the ads. The Trump administration supports it. How about that? Republican Senator Grassley, Democratic Senator Durbin, and the Trump administration support it. It sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn't it? It sounds like just the kind of thing that would pass in the ordinary course of business in the Senate. But, unfortunately, it ran into a problem. The problem? Pharma. The pharmaceutical companies don't want to tell us how much these drugs cost, so they are trying to stop this amendment.
They are trying to stop this amendment. They have one Senator who has created many obstacles for me to bring this to the floor. We have had everybody on Earth calling him, and we are not getting anywhere. It seems that pharma is not ready for putting the cost of the drug on their ad.
It means that when it comes down to it, not only will the American Medical Association, which supports our amendment, the American Association of Retired People, which supports our amendment, and the 76 percent of Americans--despite all of the support--we are going to have a tough time passing it. Pharma is hard to beat. Pharma is hard to beat.
When we talk about the increasing cost of Medicare and the cost of healthcare across America, Blue Cross Blue Shield tells me it is the driver of the increase in healthcare costs, prescription drugs.
Blue Cross Blue Shield in Illinois told me they spend more money on prescription drugs each year than they spend on inpatient hospital care. Think about that--more money than inpatient hospital care.
If we are going to do something about it, we ought to do the basics. The basics would be disclosing to the American people how much these drugs cost. You haven't heard the last of it when it comes to this amendment.
If Pharma is successful in stopping us from offering this amendment, and even getting a vote on it, I will be back. I am going to continue to return because I think it is important that consumers across America get full disclosure of information on these drug ads.
Incidentally, you know how many countries in the world advertise drugs like the United States? Only one other country, New Zealand. New Zealand and the United States are the only two, and pharma spends $6 billion a year.
When it comes to dealing with increasing costs of Medicare, this is one of the things we can do. We also want to say Medicare can bargain, just as the Veterans' Administration does, to get a good deal on drug pricing. Right now, they can't, but if they could bring down the cost of drugs under Medicare, it would help us maintain the solvency of that critically important lifesaving program.
I see the Senator from Tennessee is on his feet.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Tennessee. I value his friendship and professional support on this idea. This is basic that Americans know what the cost of the prescription drugs will be. Do you know when you discover it? When you go to the cash register, that is when you discover it.
Shouldn't we know in advance? Shouldn't we know so that if Humira, which is now at $5,500 per month, goes up to $6,000--and I understand it just did--we are aware of that fact? If we can't use transparency in competition, what are the alternatives--a government mandate? There are alternatives to that, which I think we have come up with.
Let's let the American consumer know what they are facing when it comes to these drugs, and let's use this Congress, as we are elected to use it, to reflect the will of the people, who are fed up with the spiraling cost of prescription drugs.
I thank the Senator from Tennessee for joining me on the floor.
I yield.
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