Prescription Drug Costs
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to update my colleagues and the American people about efforts to reduce the cost of prescription medicine.
Last week, our country and the American people celebrated Independence Day, marking 243 years of self-government. As elected representatives, it is our job to make the government work for the people, not the other way around.
For more than two centuries, our system of free enterprise has unleashed American innovation, investment, and ingenuity. Robust competition incubates advances in science and medicine. It leads to lifesaving cures and promising treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and other debilitating diseases.
However, prescription medicine too often smacks consumers with sticker shock at the pharmacy counter. The soaring prices leave taxpayers with a big tab--particularly under the Medicare and Medicaid Programs--and they weigh heavily on the minds of moms and dads all across the country.
Last week, I held meetings with my constituents in 12 counties across Iowa. The cost of prescription drugs comes up at nearly every single Q- and-A county meeting that I hold. Iowans want to know why prices keep climbing higher and higher. They want to know why the price of insulin keeps going up and up and up--nearly 100 years after the lifesaving discovery was made. They want to know what can be done to make prescription drugs more affordable.
I am chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and in that position, I have been working with Ranking Member Wyden from Oregon on a comprehensive plan to do just that. We have held a series of hearings to examine the drug price supply chain. We are working on a path forward. We are taking care to follow the Hippocratic Oath: ``First, do no harm.'' In other words, let's be sure we don't try to fix what is not broken. Americans don't want to give up high-quality lifesaving medicine. That is why I support market-driven reforms to boost competition and transparency, because with transparency brings accountability and the marketplace working more free of secrecy.
Congress needs to get rid of perverse incentives and fix problems that undermine competition in the drug pricing system, including withholding samples by brand-name pharmaceutical companies, pay for delay, product-hopping, and rebate-bundling. There is too much secrecy in the pricing supply chain. Consumers can't make heads or tails of why they are charged what they pay for their medicine.
President Trump has made reducing drug prices a top priority of this administration, and they have taken several steps under various laws-- including even under ObamaCare--to do things that give more freedom to consumers of medicine and on other healthcare priorities.
In another instance, on Monday, the Federal court took a negative move, knocking down a rule that would require drug companies to disclose the price of their drugs in television ads. This is very, very disappointing. Senator Durbin and I worked on this in the last Congress, and I am going to continue to work with Senator Durbin to get this job done. Congress must correct what the Federal court said the administration didn't have the authority to do. I disagree with the court, but Congress can fix that. Big Pharma is already required to disclose side effects in their ads. Consumers ought to know what the advertised drug will cost. Today, I call upon my colleagues to climb aboard that effort Senator Durbin and I will be pursuing.
Let's pass the bipartisan healthcare bills thoughtfully crafted in various committees. The previous three speakers spoke to some of those issues. Let's get these various bills correcting some of these problems over the finish line. Working together, we can drive down the price of prescription drugs without derailing quality and without derailing innovation, all of which saves lives and improves the quality of life for the American people.
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