Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership.
At a time when people see bipartisanship in short supply in Washington, DC, this is one area where we can actually make some real progress for the people we represent.
We all know that climbing healthcare costs are keeping people up at night. Many people reached out to me in my office about the impossible decisions they are required to make in order to keep pace with rising prescription drug costs--particularly the out-of-pocket costs--whether they pay some bills and have to defer or not pay others; whether they cut their pills in half or self-ration the medications, which is dangerous to their health, or don't fill prescriptions altogether because they simply can't afford the out-of-pocket costs. No family should be required to make those sorts of decisions.
Sadly, I know my constituents in Texas are not alone. The Kaiser Family Foundation poll in September found that the No. 1 healthcare concern of the American people is prescription drug prices. This is something the President has said he wants to address, the House has said they want to address, and the Senate has said we want to address, and this legislation we are talking about will help move the ball in the right direction.
A whopping 70 percent of people think growing prescription drug costs should be the top priority for Congress, which should make it our No. 1 item on our to-do list. The good news is, we are making some progress. Here in the Senate, we have taken a bipartisan approach, which is the only way to actually get things done in Congress. We talked to every major player in the supply chain, and we asked questions about whether confusing practices that are not transparent to outsiders are all combining to drive up costs.
What I find seriously concerning are the anti-competitive behaviors of some of the drug manufacturers, the gamesmanship, particularly when it comes to our patent system. We know companies pour a lot of time and money into the research and development of new medications, and we don't want to do anything to stop that. We want to incentivize that so that they are able to recover their costs and perhaps make a profit when the drug turns out to be successful. But we don't want them playing games with the patent system in a way that prevents others at some point, after that period of exclusivity, from being able to compete with a generic alternative.
Ninety percent of the drugs we take are generic, and that is why they are so affordable and so inexpensive, but for the top 10 percent of branded drugs that people take, many of them simply are unaffordable. These patents I refer to do protect the intellectual property for these key drugs and are an important part of the incredible innovation that occurs here in the United States, but increasingly we are seeing companies using the patent system as a shield for competition beyond the life of the patent.
It is time to put a stop to that. We can do that today. We can begin that process today. That is exactly why I introduced the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act with the Senator from Connecticut. It targets two specific practices used by drug companies to keep prices high. First is product hopping, which occurs when a company develops a reformulation of a product that is about to lose its exclusivity period and then pulls that original product off the market. This is done not because the new formula is necessarily more effective but because it prevents generic competitors for that product that has now been pulled off the market. The second phenomenon we are trying to combat is something called patent thicketing, which occurs when an innovator uses multiple, overlapping patents with identical claims to make it nearly impossible for competitors to enter the field.
This is not how patents were supposed to be used, and we shouldn't allow these anti-competitive practices to continue. In one case involving the drug HUMIRA, the most popular drug being prescribed today, there are more than 120 separate patents for essentially the same molecule. Meanwhile, patients can't get access to competitive drugs that probably would be cheaper here in America, while there are four approved alternatives in Europe.
The American people simply should not have to put up with this. We need to stop companies from manipulating the system and keeping competitors tied up in courtrooms so that patients can start to feel some relief.
Patients aren't the only ones who would benefit from this bill. The Congressional Budget Office released a cost estimate and found that it would lower Federal spending by more than half a billion dollars over 10 years. That is not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider what the impact would be in the private insurance market, too, that begins to add up, and it adds up where it counts the most when it comes to seniors and other patients paying out of pocket for their copays and deductibles in order to get the drugs they need.
This bill really checks every box. It protects innovation, increases competition, lowers prices for patients, and saves money for taxpayers. Not surprisingly, as the Senator from Connecticut pointed out, it has strong support on both sides of the aisle. The Judiciary Committee, which ordinarily is a pretty contentious place, unanimously voted this bill out of committee. Our friend from Illinois, Senator Durbin, and Senator Murray from Washington--two Members of the Democratic leadership--are both cosponsors of the bill, which shows just how noncontroversial this is.
I think it is time that we pass this legislation and let our constituents know we have heard their concerns and we are committed on a bipartisan basis to bringing down drug prices.
132, S. 1416.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, like the minority leader, I hope we are able to pass a larger bipartisan package this year. I serve on the Finance Committee--
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Mr. CORNYN. After I am through.
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Mr. CORNYN. I serve on the Finance Committee and on the Judiciary Committee, where this bill came from, and I know Senator Murray and Senator Alexander have a package out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I welcome the opportunity to have those bills come to the floor and to offer amendments and debate them and pass them because I agree that the country would benefit by bringing down healthcare costs, by bringing down prescription drug costs, and I believe that work is long overdue, but my bill is not going to sink the prospects of that larger package of legislation.
What we have in front of us is an uncontested, bipartisan bill that we can pass today. Let's pass it. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. What I hear the minority leader saying is that it is either everything or nothing.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I will yield for a question after I am through talking.
When there is a statement, in effect, of ``I want everything to be done now or there will be nothing done at all,'' do you know what happens? Every single time that argument is made and that position is taken, nothing happens. Nothing happens. That is what people hate about Washington, DC, and when they look at C-SPAN, if they do look at C- SPAN, and see these debates. It is everything or nothing.
The Democratic leader, who has now objected to the unanimous consent request to take up and pass a bill that he has called good and well- intentioned and has said is not large, has objected to it. I think the only people who would be rejoicing at this very moment would be the very same people who are gaming the patent system and who are keeping the out-of-pocket prices of prescription drugs high for seniors. Those are the people who are popping champagne corks right now because this is nothing more than a big, wet kiss for the people who are gaming the patent system right now to the detriment of the American people.
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Mr. CORNYN. I yield to the Democratic leader.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to my friend the Democratic leader that I support coverage for preexisting conditions, and I am not aware of anyone in the Senate who opposes it. If such a bill is scheduled for a vote on the floor, I will be more than happy to participate in that process.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in speaking through the Presiding Officer, I say to my friend that nothing gets done around here unless it is bipartisan. Right now, the bill that the House has sent us is one that divides people along party lines, which means it is unlikely we would build the bipartisan consensus we would need to get it done in the Senate. I am more than happy to engage in that debate and to vote on amendments on such a bill, but I am not going to agree to price-fixing by the U.S. Government, which will make more scarce and less available the lifesaving prescription drugs that many people need. Yet I am happy to engage in that debate, to vote, and to let the Senate and Congress work their will.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as always, I am happy to work with the Senator from New York on things on which we find our interests aligned. Obviously, there are going to be things on which we disagree. Frequently, there are. Yet he and I have worked together on legislation on which we have been able to find enough common interest to be able to build a consensus and get things done. They call that ``legislating'' around here.
There are other things that we should be doing here on a bipartisan basis. For example, taking up and passing the appropriations bills, including the Defense appropriations bill, so our U.S. military can remain the most powerful, the best equipped, the best trained, and the best led military in the world. That is of overwhelming importance. Yet our colleagues on the other side have objected to and have blocked, on at least two occasions, that Defense appropriations bill. Now we have a short-term continuing resolution that expires this November 21. I am told or have read that there is likely to be a follow-on continuing resolution that takes us up to December 20, but that is important work, too, because none of us wants to see another government shutdown. No one wins with government shutdowns.
This sort of gamesmanship that occurs by blocking bills that should have support by overwhelming bipartisan numbers in the Senate is important, too--things like paying the military, making sure that it maintains its readiness to fight and win the Nation's wars, and even more importantly, making sure it keeps the peace.
I know the majority leader has a challenge in trying to figure out how to schedule legislation on the Senate floor, but it certainly doesn't help when our Democratic colleagues repeatedly object to things like appropriations bills and put us into this dysfunction when it comes to paying the Federal Government's bills.
I would say to my friend from New York that I am always happy to work with him and with any other Member in the Senate, no matter what one's political party is and no matter what one's ideological persuasion is, because I actually believe we were sent here to solve problems and to get things done.
What I dislike and what I am disappointed about is the dysfunction that we see in the U.S. Senate, whereby, even though it is less than a year before the election, politics have overwhelmed our ability to get things done. I came to the floor to say that maybe we can't do all of this right now, today, but we can do this, and let's build on it once we have gotten the bill passed.
I am disappointed that the Democratic leader has seen fit to object to passing this bill that he himself called good and well-intended and that is supported by organizations like the American Association of Retired Persons. I do not understand it, but maybe somebody else does. Their saying that we can't do something because it doesn't include everything we want to do here, right now, is disappointing to me, and I don't think it is what the American people sent us here to do.
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