Know the Lowest Price Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to hear from neighbors in my part of Texas and beyond who are unable to afford their prescription drugs, lifesaving drugs. They are cutting back on necessities, cutting pills in half, or cutting into what little savings they may have.

After seeking administrative action to address this gag order problem with no success, I introduced with Senators Stabenow and Collins here in the House, along with 32 colleagues, a House bill to do what their measures do today.

Despite repeated requests, the House Ways and Means Committee, which enjoys jurisdiction over this matter as a Medicare bill, along with the Commerce Committee, declined to consider them.

This particular bill that we are considering now will allow those Medicare beneficiaries, seniors and individuals with disabilities, to turn to a professional pharmacist to learn if there is information available that, on a particular drug, they might be able to get a less expensive alternative by paying cash.

While pleased that this modest Know the Lowest Price bill will become law, we have had too much aiming low and shooting low in this Congress that has really been indifferent to the overall plight of seniors burdened with exorbitant prescription drug costs.

What a low bar that has been set. Patients want real change on this matter. Yet, we do the least possible to address this problem. We take baby steps when bold steps are required. To borrow from Mark Twain, I believe seniors can recognize the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, like we are getting today.

While this may enable some to learn the lowest available price, I believe what we need to find out about is the highest price that is being extorted in too many cases. The sky seems to be the limit. Whatever can be obtained from someone who is sick or dying seems to be the price point.

We may be able to cure some cancers and diseases--we want to encourage a price that will encourage continued innovation--but it need not come at the levels that are being charged too many people today only because this Congress is unwilling to curb the government monopoly that it has granted.

Pharmaceutical pricing is a tangled knot. There is no one panacea. Every step forward is a good step forward.

I formed a House Prescription Drug Task Force three years ago to begin to look at administrative and legislative steps in how we encourage innovation without being exploited by monopoly prices.

I think there is much more we can do, much more for someone like Bob from San Antonio, who has suffered from crippling arthritis for decades. He has seen the prescription that he relies on skyrocket from about $200 a year to $22,000 in co-payments annually. He finally had to switch to a less expensive drug and lives with the fear that it will not adequately cover his pain, even though it has become too painful to afford it.

Patients like Bob need much more than modest bills. We need a Congress that does not repeatedly cave in to the Big Pharma lobbyists. What is happening this week, this very week, is yet another reminder of the choice that has been made between a special interest and the needs of seniors.

With the active assistance of the Majority Leader, Big Pharma tried to exploit bipartisan opioid legislation and further burden patients with a provision undoing what had been a bipartisan agreement that helped plug the so-called donut hole and lowered patients' out-of- pocket drug spending in Medicare.

Pharma's plan would save them $4 billion, but the costs would have been shifted either to our seniors and individuals with disabilities directly or through the premiums that they pay.

Unable to defend this heist on its merits of flawed and misleading advertisements, and a hoard of lobbyists who have been here to try to get that $4 billion, I hope that we have it stopped. Hopefully, in fact--speak of hope--in a new Congress, we can see some action on what really might make a difference, and that is the ability of Medicare to negotiate for our seniors to get lower prices in much the same way the Veterans Administration does for our veterans.

I have introduced, along with almost 90 sponsors, the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act to harness the purchasing power of the government through the Health and Human Services Secretary. If negotiations fail, the Secretary would use good old American competition to lower them, bringing in generics, bidding, and competition, a real American way to solve what is a serious American problem.

Patients should not have to fight their insurer or a drug company when they need to be fighting their disease. Patients need this Congress to reclaim its voice and to not be gagged any longer. It can no longer let Big Pharma and its agenda define the debate. Instead, we need to end Big Pharma's exploitation of patients in order to get windfall profits.

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