Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce two bills aimed at continuing the important progress we have made so far to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer's disease. I know how devastating this disease is. My father, grandfather, and two uncles all died from Alzheimer's. I am committed to this effort both as a person whose beloved family members have suffered from this disease as well as a Senator concerned about the impact on our families and our healthcare budgets.
When I founded the Congressional Alzheimer's Task Force in the Senate in 1999, there was virtually no focus on Alzheimer's in Washington. Twelve years ago, I coauthored the bipartisan National Alzheimer's Project Act with my colleague Senator Evan Bayh. Before we passed that legislation, there was no coordinated, strategic national plan to focus our efforts to defeat Alzheimer's and ensure that our resources are maximized and leveraged. NAPA fixed this by convening a panel of experts to create a coordinated strategic national plan to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer's disease by 2025. The expert council updates the plan annually.
We have made some progress in our efforts to find a treatment, means of prevention, or cure, but Alzheimer's still costs our Nation an astonishing $321 billion per year, including $206 billion in costs to Medicare and Medicaid. If we continue along this trajectory, Alzheimer's is projected to claim the minds of 12.7 million seniors and nearly surpass $1 trillion in annual costs by 2050. It takes a tremendous toll on families, too. In 2021, family caregivers provided 16 billion hours of unpaid care for loved ones with dementia. That job is often 24/7 and often harms the health of the caregiver.
The National Alzheimer's Project Act is set to expire in 2025, so we need to reauthorize this critical legislation to make sure that our research investments remain coordinated, and we can maximize their impact.
The first bill that I will introduce today with my colleagues Senators Warner, Capito, Markey, Moran, and Menendez, is the NAPA Reauthorization Act. It would reauthorize NAPA through 2035 and modernize the legislation to reflect strides we have made understanding the disease, like including a new focus on promoting healthy aging and reducing risk factors.
The second bill that I will introduce, with my colleagues Senators Markey, Capito, Warner, Moran, and Menendez, is the Alzheimer's Accountability and Investment Act. That bill would continue through 2035 a requirement that the Director of the National Institutes of Health submit an annual budget to Congress estimating the funding necessary for NIH to fully implement NAPA's research goals. Only two other areas of biomedical research--cancer and HIV/AIDs--have been the subject of special budget development aimed at speeding discovery, and this ``bypass budget,'' as it is known, helps us to understand the additional funding needed to find better treatments, a means of prevention, and ultimately a cure for Alzheimer's disease.
Nearly half of baby boomers reaching age 85 will either be afflicted with Alzheimer's or caring for someone who has it. In many ways, Alzheimer's is the defining disease of this generation. We have made tremendous progress in recent years to boost funding for Alzheimer's research, which holds great promise to ending this disease that has had a devastating effect on millions of Americans and their families. The two bills I introduce today will maintain our momentum and make sure that we do not take our foot off the pedal just as our investments in basic research is beginning to translate into potential new treatments. We must not let Alzheimer's define our children's generation as it has ours. ______
By Ms. HIRONO (for herself, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Markey, and Mr. Hagerty):
S. 4209. A bill to require a feasibility study regarding establishing new diplomatic posts in the Pacific Islands; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
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