Senate Resolution 30--Declaring that Achieveing the Primary Goal of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease of the Department of Health and Human Services to Prevent and Effectively Treat Alzheimer's Disease by 2025 Is an Urgent National Priority

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Collins for her great leadership for so long on this issue. We have together authored this resolution, and she has been a true champion for those suffering from this debilitating disease.

Our resolution builds on the legacy of work and research that has been done in America. It declares the prevention and effective treatment of Alzheimer's by 2025 an urgent national priority and calls for enhanced resources necessary to achieve this goal.

There is no better time than now to discuss this critical issue and draw attention to this disease because, as my colleague from Maine noted, November is Alzheimer's Disease Awareness and Family Caregivers Month. President Reagan made this designation back in 1983 to raise awareness about the devastating impacts of Alzheimer's disease on patients and their caregivers.

Alzheimer's presents one of the toughest medical, economic, and social challenges of this country. We all know we are seeing a doubling of the senior population in this country--some call it a silver tsunami, and, of course, it is a positive. More and more people are living long and longer. But we also know we are seeing more and more people who are living with very difficult diseases, and one of them, in fact the leading one, is Alzheimer's.

This disease takes an incredibly enormous toll, both on patients as well as those who must sit helplessly by and watch as the disease progresses and slowly takes away a loved one.

Right now close to 5.2 million Americans are living with this disease, including nearly 100,000 people in my home State of Minnesota.

These numbers will grow dramatically. If we continue on the same trajectory we are on now, by 2050 an estimated 16 million Americans will be living with this disease. That is an increase of almost 320 percent over what we see today--320 percent over what we see today.

The financial cost of providing care for people afflicted by the disease is staggering for families, for our health care system, and of course for the Federal budget.

In 2013 we will spend $203 billion caring for individuals with Alzheimer's. Medicare and Medicaid will bear about 70 percent of these costs. By 2050 we will be paying more than $1.2 trillion to care for people with Alzheimer's.

We also know it is tough on caregivers. They suffer an emotional and physical toll that results in a higher incidence of chronic conditions for themselves.

In 2012 more than 15 million family members, spouses, children, and friends in the United States provided care to an adult with Alzheimer's. The unpaid care is valued at more than $216 billion.

So many of the people, friends of mine, who are involved in this care also have their own children. That is why we call them the sandwiched generation. They are literally sandwiched in between caring for their aging parents and caring for a child.

Just as the country addressed the needs of working moms and dads in the 1970s, we must now address the needs of working sons and daughters. This is a critical piece of the puzzle in taking on the Alzheimer's challenge.

Most important, our resolution is about the lives that could be improved with better treatments and cures. Earlier this year I met with 30 Minnesotans who were here in Washington, DC, each having been touched by Alzheimer's. I have been at rallies. I have seen those purple shirts in our State. Thousands and thousands of people gathered to say: We want a cure. We want better treatments. We do not want to lose our loved ones like this.

One way we can help stem the tide of this devastating disease is through research. As my colleague from Maine mentioned, the Mayo Clinic does fine research in this area. They have found ways to identify Alzheimer's earlier through testing. At first you might say: How does that help to get a cure? How are we ever going to know what treatments work best and what a cure is if we cannot first identify it at early stages so we can then see improvements? Because if we identify it too late, you are never able to test to see if treatments work. The University of Minnesota is also doing outstanding research on mice--prize-winning research.

Here is the fact of any of these numbers. We all remember this is not just about the numbers; it is about the people. But if there is any number to remember, it is this: If we were able to delay the onset of Alzheimer's by just 5 years--5 years--we would be able to cut the government spending on Alzheimer's care by almost half in 2050--almost half.

I see Mr. Durbin, also a leader in this area, the Senator from Illinois, out on the floor. He knows what we are talking about with the budget, the kind of money we are going to need to help our kids to make our country a better place. Just think of what we could do with that money if we could reduce the spending on this debilitating disease by half by 2050.

The answers on Alzheimer's will not just drop from the sky. It will take dedicated scientists, advanced research initiatives, and skilled doctors to conduct the trials and care for as many patients as possible until we finally put an end to the disease.

That is what this is about. A friend of mine is in town today, commissioner Mike Opat from Hennepin County. Hennepin County has the biggest public hospital in Minnesota, and as county attorney I used to represent that hospital. I know what this means for their budget every single day, as people who could have been cured or people who could have had the onset of the disease be delayed have suffered and have been in the hospital and have been on the taxpayer dime. Of course we are going to take care of them, but there are so many other things this money could be used for.

The Advisory Council on Alzheimer's Research, Care, and Services--which is led by Dr. Ronald Petersen, a Minnesotan and a leading researcher on Alzheimer's--has acknowledged that in order to reach the goal of effectively treating Alzheimer's disease by 2025, our country must invest $2 billion per year. It sounds like a lot of money but not with these other figures I just put out there; that $1.2 trillion in treatment, the doubling of the number of seniors whom we are seeing by 2030--$2 billion per year.

That is why Senator Collins and I have joined together to submit this resolution which resolves that the Senate will strive to double the funding the United States spends on Alzheimer's research in 2015 and develop a plan to meet the target of $2 billion a year over the next 5 years.

Today we spend approximately $500 million per year on Alzheimer's, as noted by my colleague. So we have a long way to go to meet this goal. It is not easy. But in the long term, it will save us money, it will save lives, and it will make for a better world for literally millions of people in this country and around the world.

I urge my colleagues to join Senator Collins and me in supporting this important resolution.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source