Prescription Drug Costs

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, first, I express my appreciation to the chairman of the Committee on Finance, Senator Grassley, not only for his leadership but also for his persistence on an issue that affects so many Americans, and that is the soaring price of prescription drugs.

Three committees--the Committee on Finance, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and the Committee on the Judiciary-- have all advanced bipartisan legislation to reform our broken drug pricing system.

The Aging Committee, which I chair, has held eight drug pricing hearings which have highlighted the burden of soaring prices and the manipulation of the market by individuals like the infamous Martin Shkreli. It is now past time for us to move forward to the Senate floor to debate these bills that have bipartisan support and that have garnered the approval of three major committees.

The Finance bill, which Senator Grassley has crafted with Senator Wyden and others and of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, makes crucial improvements to Medicare Part D, such as protecting seniors with an out-of-pocket spending cap as well as including cost control measures, such as an inflationary cap to limit pharmaceutical price hikes.

In one of the hearings that the Aging Committee held, it heard testimony that was heartbreaking from a former teacher with multiple myeloma who had to refinance her home in order to cover the cost of her $250,000 cancer medication. We heard example after example.

I will never forget my standing in the pharmacy line in Bangor, ME, where I live, and ahead of me was a couple who had just been told that the couple's copay was $111.

The husband turned to his wife and said: Honey, we just can't afford that.

They walked away--away from the medication that one of them needed.

I asked the pharmacist: How often does this happen?

He told me that it happens every day.

We have to take action. That experience led me to author legislation that became law that prohibited gag clauses that were preventing pharmacists from advising their patients, their customers, on whether or not there was a less expensive way to purchase their prescription drugs. I am proud to say that this legislation is now law, but there is much more that we need to do.

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on which I serve, has incorporated more than 14 measures to increase price competition in its legislation on lowering healthcare costs. I know the Presiding Officer is a member of that committee as well. I am pleased to say that the bill includes major portions of the Biologic Patent Transparency Act, which is a bill that I authored with Senator Tim Kaine. It is intended to prevent drug manufacturers from gaming the patent system.

Now, patents are very important. They help to spur innovation, and that period of exclusivity encourages drug manufacturers to invest more into lifesaving drugs. Yet the fact is, when the patent has expired, generics should be allowed to come to the market and drive down the costs. According to former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, if all of the biosimilars--those are generics for biologic drugs--that had been approved by the FDA had been successfully marketed in our country in a timely fashion, Americans would have saved more than $4.5 billion in 2017.

A biosimilar version of HUMIRA, the world's best-selling drug, has been on the market in Europe for more than a year, while American patients must wait until 2023. We simply cannot allow this kind of abuse of the patent system to continue.

The Judiciary Committee has also advanced proposals to empower the Federal Trade Commission to take more aggressive action against anticompetitive behaviors. Last month, the FTC charged the infamous Martin Shkreli with an anticompetitive scheme of setting an increase of more than 4,000 percent overnight for the lifesaving drug DARAPRIM. That was the focus of an investigation on the Aging Committee that I led with former Senator Claire McCaskill. I applaud the FTC for taking action, and we simply must give them more authority and the resources to pursue these kinds of anticompetitive cases that drive up the cost of prescription drugs.

Finally, I hope that we have the opportunity to debate other worthy proposals, including one that Senator Shaheen and I have introduced to lower the skyrocketing price of insulin.

I want to commend the administration for today releasing a new plan to drive down the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries. The fact is, between 2012 and 2016, the average price of insulin nearly doubled. According to the Health Care Cost Institute, the price of an average 40-day supply of insulin rose from $344 in 2012 to $666 in 2016. There is no justification for that. Insulin was isolated nearly 100 years ago, and while there are different varieties of insulin, it is still insulin.

As cochairs of the Senate Diabetes Caucus, Senator Shaheen and I have introduced legislation which creates a new pricing model for insulin, and our bill would hold pharmacy benefit managers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers accountable for surging insulin prices by incentivizing reductions in list prices.

For the most popular insulins, this would result in as much as a 75- percent decrease in prices on average. Whether you are insured or you are paying out of pocket, you would benefit from that significant decline in the price if you need insulin to control your diabetes.

Congress has a tremendous opportunity to deliver a decisive victory in both lowering healthcare costs and in improving healthcare for the people in my State of Maine and throughout our country.

Let's not delay any longer. We must act on prescription drug legislation without further delay. We have three committees that have produced bills, and I believe this should be a priority for this Chamber.

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