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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am hearing a lot of news reports, and if they are correct, it sounds like the majority party has a very partisan bill that they want to call a drug pricing bill.

And I am also told that this is moving along because it looks like the Parliamentarian is currently reviewing that proposed legislation to see if it fits into the process of reconciliation.

If the majority party passes its partisan bill, it will be bad policy for patients and taxpayers, but that doesn't mean we don't have answers to the problems that they are trying to solve.

But first of all, let me say what the Senate-proposed legislation-- what we know about it--would do. It would put taxpayers at risk for more spending. It would fail to enact any bipartisan accountability of Big Pharma and powerful middlemen that we call pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs for short.

Yes, a bipartisan bill limiting pharmaceutical increases is possible. And their bill has been developed in secret, with no markup or open debate.

Now, this partisan bill and this process are a far cry from bipartisan drug pricing ideas that I have developed over the past few years.

In the past 12 months alone, I have passed five bipartisan drug pricing bills out of committee that will lower prices and create more competition and hold Big Pharma and PBMs accountable.

In addition, I have a comprehensive bill to lower prescription drug prices that could pass the Senate with at least 60 votes. My bill is bipartisan; it has been negotiated; and it is comprehensive.

The bill is called the Prescription Drug Pricing Act. It is also known as Grassley-Wyden, but I want to be fair to Wyden. I am not sure that he would claim that he negotiated that bill, but I still like the bipartisan part of it.

The Senate should act today on this bipartisan bill to lower drug prices because this is what Grassley-Wyden would do: It would lower costs for seniors by $72 billion. It would save the taxpayers $95 billion. Those are CBO figures.

It establishes an out-of-pocket cap, eliminates the donut hole, and it redesigns Medicare Part D, that needs some redesigning after 19 years. This legislation will hold Big Pharma and powerful PBMs accountable.

Now, too often, cheaper alternatives like generics are available, but Big Pharma and these middlemen have an incentive to push the patient into higher-cost drugs, and patients pay the cost. My bill ends that incentive and is very pro-consumer.

A third point I want to make, it ends taxpayer subsidies to Big Pharma. It does it by capping annual price increases of Medicare Part B and D drugs at inflation. In other words, drug companies can't raise prices two or three times a year 5 to 10 percent--once a year at no more than CPI.

A Kaiser Foundation study found that half of the drugs in Medicare Part B and D increased higher than inflation over the period of time that Kaiser study covered. Over 600 drugs during the study increased 7.5 percent or more.

Another point of the bill: It establishes accountability and transparency. There are 25 major provisions to my bill to reform how the pharmaceutical industry operates.

Accountability in my bill includes, one, ending clawbacks that drive up costs at pharmacy counters for the patient. Second, ending ``spread pricing'' in Medicaid contracts that drive up taxpayers' costs. Three, requires sunshine on powerful PBM financial audits so the public knows the true net cost of a drug.

Everything with PBMs is opaque. You don't know what goes on between the manufacturer and the consumer.

And, four and lastly, requires sunshine on excessive drug price increases and sunshine on the launch price of a new high-cost drug.

Big Pharma and powerful middlemen benefit from the current system that we have today, and at the same time, patients and taxpayers suffer. My bill's bipartisan reform will change all of that.

Finally, the bill is bipartisan. I suppose Democrats get tired of me talking about a bipartisan bill when they are in the secrecy of their rooms drawing up their own bill.

We have 11 Republicans who supported this bill in the Finance Committee markup or are cosponsors of the bill. Thirteen Democrats supported this bill in markup. It was debated and negotiated in public.

But don't take my word for it, take it from some of my Democratic colleagues. A few months ago, the senior Senator from Delaware said this:

Senator Grassley did, I thought, a masterful job in drafting a bill with broad bipartisan support.

And the chairman of the Finance Committee and senior Senator from Oregon--and he is probably going to hate me for saying this, but I am going to quote him:

Big Pharma was relentless in fighting what Senator Grassley is talking about and has been for 2 years.

My bill will save seniors money, save taxpayers money, hold Big Pharma and powerful middlemen accountable, and enact necessary reform and sunshine; plus, it has bipartisan support.

So we can lower drug prices without having to resort to this partisan reconciliation process. The Grassley Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act is a solution. It is a product of a bipartisan, transparent process. Compare that to the secrecy of the Democratic reconciliation process.

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