Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, let me begin my remarks by thanking my friend for, No. 1, visiting Texas this past weekend. We are next-door neighbors. We share a lot in common. But, particularly, I want to thank him for highlighting this injustice. It is shocking to me that a U.S. Senator would have to introduce legislation to pass both Houses and get the President's signature for people to get their money back from the Federal Government. It is shocking, and I didn't know anything about it until the Senator from Louisiana highlighted it, so I thank him for that.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of the bill and would encourage all of our colleagues to join. I can't imagine why it couldn't pass by unanimous consent. I don't even know why we need to process this through the normal regular order, as we call it around here, but I wish him good luck and certainly my constituents would like to see that $2.1 billion back in their pockets instead of the Federal Treasury. So I thank him. Prescription Drugs

Mr. President, on another matter, during the August break back home, I heard from a startling number of my constituents about their increasing struggles to deal with the cost of their prescription medications. This included stories about skipping their blood pressure medication or diabetics rationing their insulin and people traveling across the border, going to Mexico--to the farmacias in Mexico--to get inhalers at a lower price. Of course, the problem is, you don't know when you go to another country whether it is as advertised, whether it is counterfeit, or whether it is genuine. So there are risks associated with that. But my point is that people are struggling to deal with their drug costs, and they are going to extraordinary means, some of which are potentially dangerous to their health.

I know my constituents back home are frustrated by confusing price hikes. They don't understand the dramatic price differences from one pharmacy to the next. They are terrified about what will happen if the price gets so high that they will have to give up taking their prescriptions altogether.

It is no surprise that a recent Gallup poll found that Americans view the pharmaceutical industry more negatively than any other industry. A whopping 58 percent said that they have a negative view of the pharmaceutical industry, and 48 percent have a negative view of the healthcare industry as a whole. Congress's numbers are much worse than that, but the point is, people are concerned, and they want us to do something about it.

When the products and services these groups provide mean the difference between life and death--which they do--that lack of trust is a bad sign, to be sure. I believe, along with many of my colleagues, that it is time to get to the bottom of these rising costs and provide the American people with some transparency, some clarity, some peace of mind, and hopefully a break in their out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs.

In the Senate we have taken a bipartisan approach that reaches across several of our standing committees, and we have made some serious progress. I would like to remind anybody who is listening what we have done so far and what we need to do next.

Earlier this summer, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee passed a package to end surprise billing to create more transparency and create more competition. The Senate Finance Committee on which I sit passed a package of bills designed to reduce prescription drug prices for seniors and children, and the Judiciary Committee, on which I also sit, has passed several bills to lower the cost of prescription drugs and stop bad actors from gaming the system.

We have talked to every major player in the supply chain and have asked questions about the confusing practices that are driving up costs. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the Presiding Officer's leadership when it comes to this topic, knowledgeable as he is about the healthcare industry, beyond the average Senator.

One example of the problem is the anti-competitive behavior of drug manufacturers. Companies pour extensive time and money into research and development of new medications, and that is good. What they get in return is the ability to recover their costs and earn a profit under a patent. These patents justifiably protect the intellectual property of these drugs for a time and are a key driver behind the incredible innovation that occurs here in the United States.

The United States discovers and manufactures more innovative and lifesaving drugs than any other country in the world, but we are increasingly seeing companies using the patent system as a shield for competition beyond the life of a patent, and it is time we put that to a stop.

One of the bills in the Judiciary Committee that I introduced is called the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act, which would address two circumstances that lead to higher drug costs. First is something called product hopping, which occurs when a company develops a reformulation of a product that is about to lose its patent and pulls the original product from the market. This is done not because the new formula is more effective, necessarily, but because it prevents generic competitors from competing with the original product.

One example is a drug called Namenda, which is used by patients with Alzheimer's disease, a terrible, devastating disease. Near the end of the exclusivity period, the manufacturers switched from a twice-daily drug to a once-daily drug. That move, under the current law, prevented pharmacists from being able to switch patients to a lower cost generic--even though it is just as effective--so the company could continue to earn a profit under this exclusivity provision under the patent laws. By defining these types of anti-competitive behaviors, the Federal Trade Commission would be able to bring antitrust suits against the bad actors who deliberately game the system.

Secondly, the bill disarms patent thickets, which occur when an innovator uses multiple overlapping patents or patents with identical claims to make it harder for competitors to enter the field. One example is the drug HUMIRA, which is commonly used to treat arthritis and a number of other conditions. AbbVie, the manufacturer of HUMIRA, has 136 patents and 247 patent applications on that drug, which has been available for more than 15 years. This type of behavior makes it very difficult for biosimilar manufacturers to bring a product to market--competition. While the patent on the actual drug formula may have expired, there are still, in this case, hundreds of other patents to sort through. Litigating all of these extraneous patents is expensive, difficult, and unnecessary. This artificial structure denies market entry for competitors years beyond the exclusivity period that the law intends to grant. Today, there are five competitors of HUMIRA that are available in Europe, but they are blocked from being sold in the United States until 2023.

This bill will not stifle innovation or punish those who use the patent system as it is intended; it simply stops the bad guys from profiting off the backs of patients. This is a critical component of our efforts to bring down drug costs, and I am glad this proposal received unanimous support in the Judiciary Committee.

Later this week, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee is holding a hearing about pharmaceutical companies gaming the system, and I am eager to see what kinds of proposals our friends in the House introduce as part of this effort.

I think it is fair to say that we have done some serious work here in the Senate when it comes to reducing prescription drug costs, but we have work ahead of us to do. In other words, we have to bring them to the floor for a vote, and I hope we do so soon.

I appreciate the countless Texans who have reached out and communicated with me and who continue to reach out to share their concerns and their stories about unnecessarily high out-of-pocket drug costs. I am committed to working with all of our colleagues across the aisle to address these rising healthcare costs generally and to ensure that drug companies put patients before profits.

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