State Health Care Premium Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1425.

To be honest, I am a little bit baffled. We are in the midst of a global pandemic the likes of which this world has not seen in over 100 years, but sadly enough, my Democratic colleagues think it is a good idea to pass a law that would handcuff the ability of industry to create a vaccine and medicines to fight this disease.

Are you kidding me?

The price controls and regulations proposed in this bill completely eliminate any incentive for these drug developers to spend money to invent new drugs. Can you imagine any company, pharmaceutical or not, being taxed at the rate of 65 to 95 percent of what they make?

We need the next remdesivir or dexamethazone to save people's lives, and such policy would not allow this to happen.

What has happened in the past because of overregulation of industry in the U.S.? These companies have left the U.S. and gone where? Gone to China. How has that worked out for us during this pandemic? China has thus had a stranglehold on this Nation when it comes to the drugs that we need.

At a time of national consensus that we need to purchase fewer drugs from China, the Democrats want to ensure that more of them are developed there and that we have to respond to them. This is insanity.

Madam Speaker, make no mistake: I absolutely do agree that the costs of drugs in this country are too high. I am a physician. I still practice. I still see patients when we are back in our districts, and this is their number one complaint. But there are bipartisan and commonsense measures that we can implement to decrease the cost of drugs.

Like I have said many times before, if we want to lower the cost of drugs, we need pharmacy benefit manager reform. We are the only country in the world that allows these middlemen to drive up costs. They cost this Nation over $800 million a year in unnecessary drug costs.

This is a bipartisan and commonsense reform, rather than this nonsense legislation, that we can work on together to decrease the cost of drugs.

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