Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - October 14, 2009)

By Mrs. SHAHEEN (for herself and Mr. Vitter):

S. 1778. A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to generic drugs, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce two health care bills that will help control health care costs and provide patients with better care. I believe these bills are easy to understand and reflect commonsense approaches to controlling health care costs.

The first bill, the Reducing Emergency Department Utilization through Coordination and Empowerment, or REDUCE Act, S. 1281, would reduce costly and excessive emergency room visits by providing patients with more consistent and coordinated care.

Emergency room overutilization is a source of wasteful spending in our health care system. Estimates show that $14 billion are wasted each year in unnecessary emergency room visits. It drives up the cost of health care and leads to overcrowding of our emergency rooms.

Frequent users of emergency room services make up a small, but very costly portion of the population. These individuals tend to have multiple chronic illnesses and severe mental illness. They often live in poverty or are homeless. Many times they use the emergency room because they have nowhere else to go.

In the most extreme cases, these individuals can cost the system millions of dollars. You heard right, one person can put a multi-million dollar strain on our health care system. For example in Camden, NJ, one person cost taxpayers $3.5 million over 5 years in Medicaid and Medicare payments.

We need to fix this problem, and I believe we can. The REDUCE Act is modeled after successful pilot programs across the country. It provides beneficiaries with a care management team consisting of a medical provider, a social worker and a community health worker that can provide medical care and support in any setting. The care management team also helps to ensure that these individuals are going to their primary care doctors and mental health providers on a regular basis.

Research shows it works. In fact, after two years of enrollment in one pilot program, on average, individual emergency room visits were reduced by 61 percent and emergency room charges were reduced by 59 percent for those that participated.

There is a lot we need to do to reform our health care system, but as we work on reform broadly, we also need to focus attention on individuals, especially these high cost patients. Doing so will improve care for this vulnerable population and reduce costs.

The second bill, the Access to Affordable Medicines Act, S. 1778, will increase access to lower cost generic drugs by closing a loophole some brand name drug companies exploit that needlessly and unfairly delays the entry of safe, lower-cost generic drugs to the consumer market.

As the law currently stands, when brand name manufacturers make labeling changes, generic drug labeling must reflect this change prior to the drug being approved and introduced in the market.

Too often, big pharmaceutical companies make last minute changes to the label. Many times the labeling changes are insignificant and do not deal with safety or warnings. In fact, these last minute changes are often used by brand name pharmaceutical companies to purposefully delay the introduction of cost-saving generic drugs by weeks or months. This can cost consumers and the federal government millions of dollars.

My bill would stop these costly practices by providing a 60-day grace period for the generic drug company to submit the new labeling for approval and marketplace distribution, while preserving safeguards if the new labeling truly presents a safety issue.

As we work to pass comprehensive health care reform in Congress, we do it with families and small businesses who struggle everyday with the high cost of health care in mind. These bills are the types of sensible reforms that we need to make so that the health care system is more affordable and more efficient. I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues on this legislation.

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