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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there was a time not that long ago when families had a similar challenge across America: what to do with mom and dad. At that time, there wasn't much to turn to. If you were fortunate, your parents, during the course of their lifetime, saved up enough money to take care of themselves.

But in my family and many others, it was common to have that spare bedroom for grandma and grandpa because there was no place else to go. It was part of American family life. It caused some hardship. The kids had to double up in the bedrooms, and some of the activities in the family were limited. But you did it because you loved them and they needed help and they couldn't take care of themselves.

In 1939, that started to change. A President named Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought, It is time for us to give some relief to these families, to give dignity to seniors in their retirement years. And he created a program called Social Security--now one of the most popular programs in the United States.

You don't hear many candidates for President standing up and saying, ``I am going to cut Social Security benefits,'' do you? It is worshiped and venerated and respected and followed by families across America. But the critics in the creation of Social Security called it socialism. Socialism: Too much government, leave us alone; let mom and dad live in that spare bedroom; don't give them a separate savings account they can accumulate during their lifetime. If they do it, fine. If they don't, fine too. Socialism.

Fast forward to the 1960s. Now we have a new concern: How are we going to pay for the healthcare of seniors now that they are living longer because of Social Security? What are we going to do about it?

There was a concern in Washington that the cost of medical care-- surgeries and treatment--was just too expensive for the average person. And so President Lyndon Baines Johnson created Medicare. Medicare was a health insurance program for senior citizens across America.

When it started, it ushered in a dramatic change in healthcare in America. The construction of hospitals started expanding their pace across this country. Medicare made a big difference.

What did they say about it in criticizing it? Socialism: Too much government trying to provide healthcare for senior citizens. Of course, Medicaid came on its heels, as well, to take care of low-income individuals facing the same challenge.

``Socialism''--we hear that time and again. This morning, the Republican Senate leader criticized efforts to lower pharmacy drug costs across America. He called it prescription drug socialism. Here we go again. Any effort to help the average family who is trying to get by and trying to make ends meet that involves the government is criticized as socialism. The argument was made by the Republican leader that this socialism, this lowering of prescription drug prices, is ultimately going to stifle research and competition. He failed to mention one or two things.

First, he failed to mention that virtually every single prescription drug that is now making a difference across America started with government research. The National Institutes of Health--the premier medical research Agency in the world--did the basic research for virtually every single one of these drugs. As much as I admire the private sector--and I do--and as much as I wish the pharmaceutical industry well, the fact is, if they are honest about it, they are simply bargaining with the government that helped them get started to find profitable products.

The second thing I want to note that the Republican leader did not mention this morning is that, for decades now, we have allowed the Veterans Health Administration to negotiate drug prices. In other words, what we are now doing in Medicare, we have been doing for veterans. Our theory was our veterans deserve the best, and we have got to be able to afford it as a government, and they have to be able to afford it as individuals. So we negotiated these drug prices. I didn't hear any screaming and hollering about helping our veterans, because it was the right thing to do.

Doing that for veterans is virtually the same thing that is happening in other countries. Why are exactly the same drugs that are made in the United States sold in Canada for a fraction of the cost? Because the Canadian Government negotiated--just like the Veterans Health Administration in the United States--for reasonable prices for Canadian citizens. Now we are doing the same thing. Finally, after decades of promise, it is happening. This notion that the top 10 drugs under Medicare are now going to be negotiated so that we can bring prices within reach of the government and individuals is simply an extension of what we have been doing at the VA for years. I have to tell you it makes a difference, a serious difference.

Imagine that the Biden-Harris proposal not only allows for negotiating prices down to a reasonable level for Medicare, but it also says that you in Medicare are limited to a $2,000 annual expenditure for prescription drugs. And $2,000 is a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. For a lot of people, it is a hardship to come up with that kind of money, but it is within the reach for most Americans to pay that amount of money. We know that drugs, otherwise, are too darned expensive for them.

Now, the critics of that, like the Senator from Kentucky, this morning, call it socialism. I call it the American approach to helping families--a realistic approach that says that pharmaceutical drugs should be affordable. If I understood the position of the Kentucky Senator this morning, he thinks it is a big mistake. I think it is a breakthrough. Finally, we are going to reach the day when we can negotiate prices for those not in Medicare who will be helped as well. So I wanted to start my remarks with that.

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