Date: 2007-01-12
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

I thank the chairman of my committee for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker. when Congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit over 3 years ago. it failed to put seniors first. Our committee. the Energy and Commerce Committee. sat through the allnight markup in our own committee to see this bill come out of committee. The whole House sat in this Chamber. an allnight vote. to pass that bill by such a narrow margin after the vote was held open. Today is the day we get a chance to correct the problems that were created 3 years ago. This bill. the law. put the pharmaceutical industry ahead of our seniors. It put the health insurance industry ahead of our seniors. The bill will correct those mistakes. Opponents of this bill raise the charges of big government saying. let the market work. That is exactly what this bill will do. It will leverage the buying power of 42 million American seniors that negotiate costs of prescription drugs under Medicare. Negotiation of drug prices is alive and well in every sector of the health care industry. States negotiate for lower prices on their Medicare programs. Pharmacy chains do the same thing for the drugs they purchase. They dont have formularies. They purchase drugs for their customers. so pharmacy chains can do the same thing. All this bill does is allow the Medicare program to use a tool for free market bargaining best prices for its beneficiaries. Rarely will you see overwhelming support for an issue like we have seen on this one. Ninetytwo percent of Americans agree that we should take off the handcuffs that have been restraining the Medicare program and give it a chance to achieve greater discounts. The alternative is increasing drug costs and increasing premiums that make the benefit harder for our seniors to afford. The numbers dont lie. Under the current structure. 77 percent of seniors saw their premium part D increase in 2006 and 2007. and more than onequarter of them saw their pre.miums rise more than 25 percent. Drug prices under part D are increasing too with costs for the top 20 drugs increasing 3.7 percent in the last 6 months. When Congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit over three years ago. it failed to put our seniors first. It put the pharmaceutical industry ahead of our seniors. And it put the health insurance industry ahead of our seniors. This bill will correct those mistakes. Opponents of this bill raise charges of big government. saying to let the market work. Thats exactly what this bill does by leveraging the buying power of 42 million American seniors to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare. I Negotiation for drug prices is alive and well in every other sector of the health care industry. States negotiate for lower prices under their Medicaid programs. Pharmacy chains do the same for the drugs they purchase. All this bill does is allow the Medicare program to use a tool of the free marketbargainingto obtain the best prices for its beneficiaries. Rarely do we see overwhelming support for an issue like weve seen for this one. 92 percent of Americans agree that we should take off the handcuffs that have restrained the Medicare program and give it a chance to achieve greater discounts. The alternative is increasing drug costs and increasing premiums that make the benefit harder for seniors to afford. The numbers dont lie. Under the current structure. 77 percent of seniors saw their Part D premiums increase from 20062007. And more than onequarter of them saw their premiums rise more than 25 percent. Drug prices under Part D are increasing too. with costs for the top 20 drugs increasing 3.7 percent over six months. Thats 7.4 percent over a yearan increase twice the rate of inflation and one that will cause our seniors to hit the doughnut hole even sooner. We have a chance today to do better by our seniors. Its about time we put our seniors first and let Medicare work for them.