Stop Stalling Act and Creates Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SMITH. Madam President, I rise today to join Senator Klobuchar and my colleagues on behalf of all Minnesotans and Americans who struggle to afford their prescription drugs.

The increasing price of prescription drugs is a top concern for Americans and Minnesotans. Every day, companies are launching new treatments at astronomical prices, and they are spiking the price of older drugs, like insulin. Americans are taking notice of this greedy behavior that puts patients last.

The No. 1 issue I hear about from Minnesotans is the cost of healthcare and specifically the cost of prescription drugs. Every day, Minnesotans inspire me to fight to lower the price of prescription drugs, Minnesotans like Rachael Malmberg, a military veteran with cancer.

Before Rachel battled cancer, she battled teams on the ice, playing hockey for the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Olympic Team. Rachael's daily medicine is stabilizing her cancer, but it comes at a great cost. Even with health insurance, she still pays $9,000 a month. For Rachael, affording her prescription drugs is a matter of life or death.

I have also talked with Minnesotans like Nikki Foster, a mom living with multiple sclerosis in Brooklyn Park, MN. Nikki received her MS diagnosis only 3 months after running her first half-marathon. The diagnosis was frightening, and Nikki wondered if she would ever be able to run again. I am happy to say that 4 years later, Nikki is walking and running just fine. Her progress is due largely to the treatment regimen her doctors prescribed. However, with the rising price of her primary medication, Nikki wonders how long she is going to be able to afford it. When her medication was first introduced to the market in 2004, the price was around $16,000 a year. Today, it is more than $80,000.

Without significant changes in the formulation of her medicine, the price has skyrocketed 440 percent. Those higher prices translated to higher monthly costs and a constant source of worry for Nikki.

Finally, I am inspired by the memory of Alec Smith. Here is Alec's story. Alec transitioned off his mom's health insurance at age 26. He was a type 1 diabetic, so he depended on insulin to survive. Without insurance, Alec faced a $1,300-a-month cost for managing his diabetes. Most of that was driven by the high price of the insulin. Alec had a good job, but his diabetes treatment was eating up nearly 45 percent of his monthly salary, and that is on top of regular expenses for food and rent and other basic necessities. So Alec did what he had to do. He rationed his insulin to make ends meet. Unfortunately, less than a month after his 26th birthday and less than 1 month after he transitioned off his mom's insurance, Alec passed away. He was the victim of insulin rationing.

Colleagues, we are at a crisis point. Thousands of people like Alec are rationing their prescriptions so they can afford them, and sometimes they are literally paying with their lives. Patients with health insurance, like Nikki and Rachael, are facing higher and higher out-of-pocket costs, and seniors are being forced to choose between paying for groceries and paying for their medicine.

In the wealthiest country in the world, this is unacceptable. It is morally wrong that the pharmaceutical companies are raking profits off of skyrocketing prices while Americans struggle to pay for their prescription drugs. That is simple to understand, but the industry would have you believe otherwise.

Their first argument. Well, drug pricing is so complex; it is impossible to understand; and Congress should study the problem. I would argue this complexity serves a function. Complexity obscures all the ways the drug companies are gaming the system to drive up profits. Colleagues, we can't be paralyzed by complexity. We need to create more transparency in drug pricing.

So then the pharmaceutical companies come back with their second argument. They say high prices are the result of altruistic purposes, like investing in research, development, and innovation, but, colleagues, remember, it is taxpayers, not drug companies, who are subsidizing the basic research that leads to innovation and new cures through the National Institutes of Health. Innovation can't help people if it is too expensive to afford.

So then comes their closing argument. We aren't the problem, say the drug companies. It is the PBMs. It is the insurers. It is everybody else but us. I would argue that everyone has a role to play. Lots of companies profit from high drug prices all along the supply chain. That needs to be fixed, and all of these players need to be held accountable. Pointing fingers and shifting blame will not bring down high drug prices. Comprehensive solutions will.

In the coming weeks, I will be reintroducing the Affordable Medications Act, which is a comprehensive solution that targets the multiple causes of the skyrocketing price of prescription drugs, and a number of my Democratic colleagues are working with me on this bill. It would increase transparency and hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their role in setting high prices. My bill would make prescription drugs more affordable by allowing Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate lower prices, just like we already do with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

My bill goes further by penalizing drug companies that spike prices and allowing for the safe importation of lower cost drugs from other countries like Canada. My bill would spur innovation by creating a fund for new antibiotics and funding for clinical drug trials, and it would protect competition by blocking unfair, anticompetitive drug monopoly practices. This bill would eliminate the blame game and put patients at the center of the solution.

Now, I recently introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Cassidy to help bring low-cost biosimilars, like insulin, to the market. I am working to reintroduce legislation that would limit the ability of the big brand name drug companies to keep lower cost generic drugs off the market.

Many of these proposals have bipartisan support. Many more should, but we haven't brought any of these bills up for a vote in the Senate. I urge my colleagues to take up these proposals and the drug pricing bills making their way through the House right now as we speak. Alec, Nikki, Rachael, and all of our constituents don't have the luxury of waiting for Congress to break through legislative gridlock until they can afford what they need to live.

Thank you, Senator Klobuchar, for drawing attention to this issue and for inviting me to join with you today.

I yield to my colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine.

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