Stop Stalling Act and Creates Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I want to begin by thanking the minority leader for bringing this issue as straightforwardly and as clearly as he has. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I demand to know from the Acting Secretary of Defense and other relevant officials why we have deployed these American military assets, including an aircraft carrier group, a number of bombers and Patriot missile units to one of the most dangerous parts of the world, where they may unexpectedly provoke act of war.

We are on a dangerous path without a strategy. We are embarked on a course of potential war without informing the Congress or the American people. We have demanded repeatedly that we be briefed, and it must be in public.

This situation has reached a point of potential conflagration. The tinderbox of the Middle East is no place to operate on impulse or whim. That is the appearance this administration has created by lacking a clearly articulated strategy for the American people to know and assess. On the Armed Services Committee, we have asked repeatedly for this kind of information, and so far the administration has refused to provide it. So this kind of open hearing is necessary to be open information for the American people, and they deserve and need no less.

Prescription Drug Costs

Madam President, I turn now to a topic that is of great consequence to the American people for their health and their economic well-being.

As we all know and as the senior Senator from Minnesota, my great friend Amy Klobuchar, has very eloquently and powerfully described, the high cost of essential medicines in this country is a national disgrace. It is immoral. For the greatest country in the world to compel ordinary Americans to choose between covering the cost of their rent and putting food on the table or paying for their medicine needed to stay alive is absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable.

The only people who benefit under the current system are the high- paid executives, whose pay is increased even more by this unjust and intolerable system. It yields them greater profit without any greater help to the American people.

It has to stop, and the good news is, we have bipartisan agreement that it must stop. After years of disagreement, we are starting to see Republicans and Democrats coming together and confronting the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. Drug companies' price-gouging, their manipulation of their monopolistic power to raise those prices and make the industry's practices noncompetitive and to exclude even new products from coming to market--all of these abuses have become so extreme and so outrageous that there is now bipartisan consensus that we need to stop it.

I am proud today to support the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation, and it will finally put a stop to some of the most egregious monopolistic and predatory tactics within the drug industry. These tactics would make even the robber barons of the Gilded Age blush with guilt and embarrassment for the obvious anti-consumer effects that impact the average American.

These patent abuses go by colorful names like ``patent thicketing'' and ``product hopping,'' but these names obscure their very pernicious purpose. Patent thicketing and product hopping are only the tip of this monopolistic iceberg. While these terms may be unfamiliar to many Americans, almost everyone is familiar with the harmful effects these predatory practices produce.

The fault here is with the people who take advantage of shortages and market power. They exploit them in the same way that anti-trust abuses have been done over the decade, and they are the reason we have anti- trust laws. Now, to confront this even more egregious example of abuses of market power, we need these new laws.

According to one study in 2017, across the top 12 grossing drugs in America, drugs companies filed an average of 127 patent applications per drug. By creating a thicket, a genuine thicket of patents around their drugs, drug companies are able to double the number of years of market exclusivity that they have before a competitor can enter the market.

During this time, these drug companies are able to charge consumers extraordinarily high prices for drugs they desperately need. If you use HUMIRA or have rheumatoid arthritis, you should be deeply concerned about patent thicketing. According to one study, the manufacturer of HUMIRA has filed 247 patents so it can exclude competitors from the market. It keeps those competitive adversaries from producing drugs and can do so for a total of 39 years. During those 39 years, the cost of HUMIRA in the future--they will do it for 39 years--is just going to keep climbing. According to reports, between 2012 and 2015 alone, the average amount that Medicare and Medicaid spent on each patient using HUMIRA more than doubled--from $16,000 to $33,000. Things will only get worse in the years to come.

Rheumatoid arthritis patients are hardly the only ones who should be concerned about patent thicketing. A large number of patents have been filed to protect the market exclusivity of drugs that treat conditions like cancer, stroke, blood clots, diabetes, multiple myeloma, and macular degeneration.

Patent thickets will keep competitors off the market. It will cost consumers thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars, each year. It isn't only the patients who use the drugs who suffer these effects; we all pay the cost of higher insurance when those insurers have to pay higher costs for drugs. It hits all of us, not just the patients who suffer from these medical conditions.

Unfortunately, this obviously anti-competitive practice is not the only way drug companies abuse the patent system to keep drug prices high. Just before the protections for their first drug expire, brand- name drug companies pull a bait-and-switch, pushing consumers onto a new, slightly different drug. That means any generic competition coming to market will struggle to penetrate the market, and consumers will be stuck with the brand-name drug for even longer, likely at a significantly higher cost. In this way, the brand-name company succeeds in gouging customers and keeping their profits growing. That is their objective--not better product, not better health, not better patient experiences, only higher profits.

One of the most famous examples of product hopping--the practice I have just described--concerns Namenda, a drug to treat Alzheimer's. This drug was produced by a company called Actavis. When Actavis originally released Namenda, it was usually taken by patients twice a day, but a number of years before Namenda's market exclusivity was going to expire, Actavis went to the FDA to approve a new version of Namenda, this one taken just once a day. A new drug? No. A different way of taking it? Maybe. To improve patient health? No. To increase profits? Yes.

Although the FDA had approved this drug in 2010, Actavis strategically waited 3 years to introduce this, with the apparent goal of extending its exclusivity in the U.S. market. Once the new drug was introduced, Actavis pushed all of its customers onto it, while pulling the old drug from the market. As a result, Actavis was able to continue charging monopoly prices on essentially the same drug long after Namenda's first patent was expected to expire.

We have reached the time to stop patent thicketing and product hopping once and for all. We have reached the time to bring sanity and fairness to the drug market so consumers can see lower prices.

I am proud to be joining with Senator Cornyn of Texas to introduce the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act. It will fight these abusive practices and give consumers some much needed relief from higher drug costs. I thank Senator Cornyn for his leadership. We joined in this partnership, and it has taken many months to draft and introduce this measure. I thank his staff, as well as my own, for all of their hard work on this bill reaching this bipartisan consensus.

This legislation will embolden and encourage our anti-trust forces to pursue pharma companies that are getting away with anti-competitive practices. It will also give clear guidance to our courts to allow them to quickly and easily distinguish between product hopping and patent thicketing from truly innovative, truly inventive conduct that benefits patients.

This legislation makes sure that any company caught redhanded engaging in these harmful practices will have to pay and be held accountable.

This legislation will also lower healthcare costs for millions of Americans by increasing competition in the market. If we pass this legislation, millions of Americans may no longer have to choose between food on the table, their rent payment, and the medicine they need and deserve. That is a choice no one should ever have to make in the greatest country in the history of the world.

We cannot allow drug companies to continue their monopolistic practices and predatory abuses that only increase the profit of those companies. We cannot allow those drug companies to reap massive personal benefits for their executives, while Americans are struggling to make ends meet. I urge the Senate to immediately take up this legislation to protect American patients today.

I happily yield the floor to my colleague from Minnesota.

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