Prescription Drugs

Floor Speech

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS -- (Senate - April 18, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. I see the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee here. I will speak briefly and then certainly yield the rest of our time to him.

There is a much larger question than has been addressed so far before the Senate this morning on this particular motion to proceed; that is, whether we are going to see the incremental growth of Government involved in intervening between decisions that should be made by patients in consultation with their doctors as a matter of individual choice. If, in fact, the advocates of this particular legislation are successful, it will be one step further down the road toward a single-payer system where the Government will decide what kind of health care we get and our family members receive rather than we as a matter of individual choice in consultation with our personal family doctor. That is a dangerous trend.

As my colleagues know, the Federal Government and Federal taxpayers pay for 50 percent of health care today. I am staggered by the suggestion that
the Federal Government can somehow do a better job than the private sector through choice and competition in setting drug prices. Rather than a negotiation, this is like a take-it-or-leave-it offer with a gun to your head. The consequences, if this legislation is successful, will be that seniors will have fewer choices, Government will have grown that much bigger and interfered much more in the private choices we should all make as a matter of personal choice. The irony is, this is one of the Government programs--I would say rare Government programs--that actually works better than we thought it would. As a matter of fact, I voted for the Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003, but I was concerned when some of the estimates that came out of the Congressional Budget Office indicated it would actually cost a lot more than we originally thought. But this is a good news story.

What I don't understand is why our Democratic friends want to ruin a good thing that 80 percent of seniors who have access to this prescription drug plan say they like and 90 percent of seniors eligible have signed up for, saving on average $1,200 a year. Why in the world would we want to mess up a good thing? I don't understand it, unless it is that incremental step toward a single-payer, Government-run health care system that would be a bad direction, rather than leaving the private sector to provide choices and competition, which improves services and lowers price.

Listening to some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, they live in dread that somebody somewhere is actually making a profit in a private enterprise. I don't particularly care if shareholders in a company decide they want to risk their money to invest in a competitive enterprise to provide me and my family a service that I want and like and need and do it at a price that is lower and a service quality that is better than the Federal Government. The fact that they make a profit, good for them. That is what this country is built on. That is why our economy is the envy of the world.

Competition provided in the prescription drug benefit has forced costs down far below what was anticipated. In 2007, the average premium for the benefit is $22 a month--40 percent less than projected. We have heard the statistics before, but they bear repeating. The Congressional Budget Office new budget estimates that for the next 10 years, the net Medicare cost for the prescription drug benefit will be more than 30 percent lower than originally forecast, $265 billion. I have only been in the Senate for 4 1/2 years, but I don't think I have ever seen or even read about a Government program that actually came in under budget at a lower cost than originally projected. For some reason--and it escapes me--some of our colleagues here want to change that, and that is a mistake.

One of the editorials in one of my newspapers back in Texas, the Austin American Statesman, writes:

The incoming majority of Congressional Democrats, it seems, has a problem: a promise to fix something--the new Medicare drug program--that might not need fixing.

The basic point is this: We passed a prescription drug benefit that uses market competition to provide critical medications to seniors at costs much lower than projected. The results so far demonstrate the familiar principle that competition and choice could bring lower prices, something that should not surprise any of us. I must say, I am surprised at the magnitude of the benefit and the magnitude of the savings and the way this has lived up or, I should say, even exceeded expectations.

Today in the Wall Street Journal there is an article entitled ``Bitter Pills'' which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. CORNYN. This speaks directly to the comments made by the Senator from Michigan about the Veterans' Administration. Let me briefly read this paragraph:

Supporters of federal price ``negotiations''--really, an imposed price--also like to point to the example of the Veterans Health Administration which negotiates prices directly with drug companies. But it turns out that the vaunted VHA program has a few holes of its own. The LEWIN study--

Which it alludes to earlier, a health policy consulting firm examined the availability of the 300 drugs most commonly prescribed for seniors. It found that one in three--including [the most] popular medicines as Lipitor, Crestor, Nexium and Celebrex--are not covered by the VHA.

Not covered. That is what the advocates of this legislation, I guess, believe is the ideal, to cover less drugs, and that is what the consequences of this legislation would be.

Let me read the last sentence:

However, 94 percent of these drugs are covered under the private competition model of Medicare Part D. Fewer than one of five new drugs approved by the FDA since 2000 are available under the VHA plan.

If the right vote on this upcoming motion to proceed is to end the debate, it is not true that we haven't had debate. We are having the debate right now. But I believe the country would be better off, seniors would be better off, and choice and competition would remain available if we voted against the motion to proceed. That is how I intend to vote and urge my colleagues to do the same.

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