Remedy Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I rise today to join my colleagues in calling for necessary and long-overdue changes in how our country addresses the cost and affordability of prescription drugs.

You are going to hear today from, in addition to myself, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Smith, and Senator Kaine, as well as Senator Durbin, who spoke on these issues earlier, to highlight this egregious public health issue facing our country.

It is unacceptable that lifesaving treatments and cures are increasingly out of reach for the people who need them the most. That is why the Senate must act now to pass legislation that would lower the cost of prescription drugs. Healthcare represents one-sixth of our economy, and out-of-pocket costs account for over 10 percent of our Nation's healthcare spending, from consumers to hospitals and nursing homes.

One report found that between 2012 and 2016, the price of branded prescription drugs increased 110 percent. That is not 11 percent; that is 110 percent. Even drugs that have been available for decades, like insulin, are no longer affordable. It is outrageous, it is dangerous, and it has real consequences for real people.

For most Americans, this is deeply personal. I know it is for me. I will never forget the frightening day when we learned my daughter had a nut allergy. She was a toddler, and we were actually in a cabin. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and she ate a cashew for the first time. Her throat started to close up, although we didn't really know that was what was happening.

I still remember us driving as fast as we could through the woods for about 45 minutes to the closest emergency room, where finally they were able to help her. That was when we discovered that she had a nut allergy.

She now keeps an EpiPen with her at all times. So when the price of an EpiPen increased by three times the original amount, I knew just how dangerous that cost increase would be to the people who rely on the medication, and I spoke out.

It wasn't just me. It was moms and dads across the country who spoke out. They spoke out by writing letters. They spoke out on email. They spoke out on their Facebook pages. They spoke out on social media. It was literally a nationwide effort to take this on. We successfully worked to bring that cost down, but companies shouldn't just respond when there is outrage over social media.

By the way, not every drug has a constituency like that of parents who have kids that have nut allergies. There are a lot of rare drugs for which maybe only hundreds of families understand what a price increase means. There are drugs that have constituencies who are disabled or people who aren't going to be able to basically mob the halls of Congress to make a change.

Besides that, I don't think that is how we want to make change, anyway. Wouldn't it be better if we responded in a policy way, in a bipartisan way, and simply made some changes to the policies of our government and of our country to bring down the price of prescription drugs--not just the drugs that are most famous but for all drugs.

There are many examples of why prescription drug pricing is now out of control and why we have to take action. For instance, a Wall Street Journal article reported that the price for a multiple sclerosis drug went up 21 times in a decade--21 times. No one could explain that except that it allows the company that makes that drug to profit big time.

A Stat News story reported that the price for a leukemia drug was raised four times over the course of a single year, and it now costs nearly $199,000 a year.

We know that the price of certain insulin products rose 700 percent, accounting for inflation, in two decades. When the State of the Union happened this year, I invited a guest, and that guest was a woman named Nicole Smith Holt, and it was her son, a young man named Alec, who was a 26-year-old restaurant manager. He worked in my State. He worked hard. He was a good guy, and he was on his parents' health insurance until he was 26. When that health insurance ended, when he could not get that health insurance, he then had to pay for the insulin himself since he was a diabetic. It was $1,200 a month. He was unable to afford his insulin. So what did he do? Sadly, he did what too many people are doing in America right now. He started rationing that insulin. He rationed that insulin, and he died waiting for his next paycheck. He was a restaurant manager in the suburbs of the Twin Cities.

His mother sat at the State of the Union, looking down at the President, looking down at the Congress, to make the point that she needed action, and in the memory of her son Alec, she was going to make sure that action happens.

Congress has a duty to act, and the President should support these efforts. Committees in the House of Representatives, for the first time, have already advanced proposals to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, and we should be moving similar legislation here in the Senate.

Yes, it is true that there are two pharma lobbyists for every Member of Congress. That is a fact, and for years they have felt that they owned Congress. That has to change. They do not own me, and they do not own the people who are speaking up today.

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