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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, my remarks were written 3 days ago, and the purpose of writing those remarks 3 days ago was to come to the floor and tell you about a person that I think should not be working for the Federal Government. Then the next day, I found out somebody in government was smart enough to see that this guy was fired. But I would like to now tell the Senate why I think people like this shouldn't be working for the Federal Government and why I obviously thought he should be fired.
This refers to Dr. Vinay Prasad. Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article on this person.
Until Tuesday, Dr. Prasad served as the Food and Drug Administration's--FDA--Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and as the Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
I wonder how he got the job in the first place, and you will understand through my remarks why I wonder how he got that job.
He was appointed by the FDA Commissioner to this position.
According to media reports, Dr. Prasad left the Agency. The Wall Street Journal said the position he held at FDA was ``one of the most powerful officials in the federal government,'' and gets to determine ``whether patients get access to many life-saving medicines. Or not.''
Sadly, Dr. Prasad believes the Federal Government should restrict access to new treatments that could extend your life.
Dr. Prasad wrote a 2016 article entitled ``The case for rationing: Why we should limit public spending on cancer drugs.'' Dr. Prasad says that ``among 71 new drugs approved for solid tumors between 2002 and 2014, the median improvement in survival is just 2.1 months.'' He believes that when costs are large and the benefits are small, the government should restrict access. He thinks patients don't have the right to extend their lives.
Dr. Prasad is a proponent of what we call government rationing of care that we see in socialized healthcare systems such as the United Kingdom and Canada.
Dr. Prasad sounds like another physician, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who at one time wielded a lot of power in the Federal Government. Dr. Emanuel is considered the ``architect'' of Obamacare and served as Special Advisor for Health Policy to President Obama. In 2014, this architect of Obamacare wrote in The Atlantic: ``Why I Hope to Die At 75.'' He argues that people should just check out once they reach 75 years.
Dr. Emanuel has long argued for rationing healthcare and treating the elderly differently because they ``already had more life-years.'' You can even take an online course titled ``Rationing Care'' at the University of Pennsylvania, taught by Dr. Emanuel.
The government rationing care goes by another name that we throw around, but I have talked about examples of it so you know that it is real, called socialized medicine. Socialized medicine results in longer wait times and delayed care.
Here are some recent examples of outcomes of socialized medicine:
In January, hundreds of Canadian residents in Walkerton, Ontario, began forming a line at 2 a.m. in the dead of winter just to be put on a waiting list to see the town's new family doctor. Some residents have waited more than a decade to have a doctor in that town.
In 2023, 7.1 million people in England were stuck on a waiting list for nonemergency hospital treatment like hip replacements. Today, that waiting list is 200,000 more at 7.3 million people.
Now, you wonder why people come to the United States for medical care, from other countries. That is one of the reasons why.
Of all new medicines launched between 2012 and 2021, 85 percent were available in the United States compared to less than 40 percent in Europe.
We are also No. 1 in medical advances and discoveries. For all these reasons and even more, I don't understand why Dr. Prasad and Dr. Emmanuel believe in government health rationing healthcare.
In 2023, I joined with my Republican colleagues expressing serious concern about the Biden administration's potential use of what is called quality-adjusted life years and other discriminatory metrics when it came to prescription drug programs.
Places like the United Kingdom use quality-adjusted life years to determine drug coverage. If the government decides a drug won't extend a person's life long enough, it will restrict access. Dr. Prasad has applauded the United Kingdom for restricting access to new treatment and said that quality-adjusted life years is ``a good way to judge drugs.''
The National Council on Disability disagrees with Dr. Prasad, stating that ``quality-adjusted life years place a lower value on treatments which extend the lives of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities.''
When the government gets to dictate which treatments patients can and cannot access, we devalue people living with rare diseases, we devalue older Americans, and we devalue individuals with disabilities.
The government should use every opportunity to promote a potential miracle cure or breakthrough treatment. The Food and Drug Administration should determine if a drug is safe and effective. However, it shouldn't limit access because a government bureaucrat believes the costs outweigh the benefits.
The United States is a world leader in innovation and care. Why should the government shy away from testing limits of new treatments and miracle cures? The answer is, we should not.
We wouldn't see headlines like these if we had a different approach. Time Magazine says: ``A Baby Receives the First Customized CRISPR Treatment.''
The New York Times says: ``From No Hope to a Potential Cure for a Deadly Blood Cancer.''
In recent years, I have had constituents sit in my office pleading for the government to remove redtape so that they can access potentially life-changing, life-extending treatments for Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's disease, cancer, and other diseases.
I was proud to be a cosponsor in 2018 of the 2018 Right to Try law that President Trump advocated for and eventually signed. That law lets people with life-threatening conditions access unapproved treatments after they have tried all treatment options and are not eligible for clinical trials.
Dr. Prasad has said he is not in favor of the 2018 Right to Try law and that he ``favor[s] a strong regulatory state.'' He has long criticized the FDA for approving too many treatments that, in his view, provide only marginal benefits.
After he took the job at FDA, Dr. Prasad said:
We will take action at the first sign of promise for rare diseases. We're not going to wait.
Given Dr. Prasad has left the FDA, we don't know if this was an empty promise. I hope that whoever takes on the role of FDA's Chief Medical and Scientific Officer and Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research will support patients who face life-threatening illnesses, instead of using his or her power to restrict access to care, which, I think, is fairly certain we would presume that Dr. Prasad would do just the opposite.
The government shouldn't get to decide when its citizens are required to give up on their own life. This is true when a person turns 75 years old or when rare disease treatments may only extend a person's life by just a short period of time. If there is a cure or a treatment, you should be able to access it, regardless of what bureaucrats think.
Dr. Prasad is gone. It is good he is no longer on the government payroll. I don't know who decided to get rid of this person that shouldn't have been hired in the first place, but I want to thank them for doing that.
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