Pelosi Remarks at Press Conference to Support ‘A Better Deal’ To Lower Prescription Drug Prices
Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi joined House and Senate Democrats at a press conference to outline a report that exposes the alarming trend of rising prescription drug prices under the Trump Administration, and to highlight Democrats’ ‘A Better Deal’ to lower prescription drug prices. Below are the Leader’s remarks:
Leader Pelosi. I guess it is officially afternoon. Good afternoon everyone. It is an honor to be here with our colleagues, some of whom have served in the House and now are in the Senate, all of us – Democrats on both sides of the Capitol – coming together to discuss an issue of health and financial stability for America’s families. The unjust pricing of prescription drugs that families need are rising at unprecedented and astronomical rates while cost of living rises and wages stagnate.
It is unjust that one in five Americans using prescription drugs – one in five – is currently forced to ration their medication, often throwing them into a devastating spiral of illness and increased cost. As I said, Democratic Members of Congress from both sides of the Capitol in representing every corner of the country are here today to take real action to lower families’ skyrocketing prescription drug costs.
We’ve come here to set a standard. We have in our Better Deal on drug prices provisions that increase transparency, expand access to life-saving medication, while encouraging innovation and lowering soaring prescription costs for everyone.
For a long time, going back to our ‘6 for ’06’ in the year 2006, we called for the provision to enable the Secretary of HHS to negotiate for lower prices that is part of our Better Deal as well.
We will never stop fighting for our children, our seniors and those in need of prescription drugs and working families who cannot afford the escalation of costs, which you hear from my colleagues.
Tomorrow, President Trump will deliver his speech on prescription drug costs after months and months – more than a year – of talking about it. We are setting a high standard and hope that his proposal will meet that because we would love to work in a bipartisan way to reduce costs but, again, we have a high standard because there are high prices that families cannot afford.
I am now very pleased to yield to the distinguished Senator from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar. We welcome her to the House side of the Capitol.
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Leader Pelosi. Thank you all very much. I salute our colleagues, Congressman Doggett and Congressman Welch, Co-Chairs on the task force, [Congresswoman] Jan Schakowsky, [Congresswoman] Elijah Cummings for his great work. We are honored to have had Senators Wyden, Sanders and Klobuchar with us today and, of course, the distinguished Leader [Schumer]. I am sure that any questions you may have, our colleagues would be pleased to answer on this subject.
Q: You said you think the President is scapegoating foreign governments, do you also think that he is scapegoating the supply chain?
Congressman Doggett. It is a big change that pharma – after years of saying there is no problem here at all – has now changed their tactic to pointing their finger at someone else. I think we have to look at the entire supply chain but whether its foreigners or prescription benefit managers or drug stores, the big problem is at the source of the price when it is manufactured and that’s what the President identified going right up until a couple months ago. But what he has seemed to have abandoned with his appointments, and with his entire legislative agenda – as Peter [Welch] said, let’s find out tomorrow – is he really going to announce support for his policies as he has described them previously and push the Speaker and Leader McConnell to bring it to the Floor? Or it this just going to be more pointing the finger the way Pharma has?
Senator Schumer. One more from me and then I have to leave. Yes, gentleman in the back?
Q: Given what you have said about the expanse of lobbyists and the influence Pharma has, I am curious if a pharmaceutical company came to your campaign and wanted to donate, what would you say? Would you say no?
Senator Schumer. The bottom line is that we do what the right thing is. Period. And no ands, ifs or buts.
Leader Pelosi. Any more questions? Yes, sir?
Q: Are there any companies you want to name? We talk about this in such abstract terms as ‘pharmaceutical companies’ but are there any companies you are really hoping the White House or Congress will look seriously at?
Congressman Doggett. The manufacturer of Nolaxen would be one right here in the midst of the opioid crisis to have their prices go up 592 percent. But it is sort of one after another. We see an epi-pen shortage today. This is not just one time of drugs. This is not one type of disease. This is across the board because they are given a free hand to charge monopoly prices, and there’s no restraint exercised.
Q: For Leader Pelosi, has the White House reached out at all in terms of wanting to at least discuss with Democrats what they’re planning to lay out? Have they invited you to speak tomorrow or –
Leader Pelosi. No. And it’s unfortunate because I think you asked the right question. This is something that we should all come together on, including the pharmaceutical companies. Let’s sit down and say, ‘here’s what we see.’ Under Mr. Doggett’s leadership recently we had a hearing. Unfortunately Republicans would not grant us the hearing so we had to do it as Democrats but the testimony that we heard across the board from academics, providers of services, etcetera was very clear. The increase in the cost is almost criminal. It’s almost criminal.
So let me just say, a couple things. One of the things they testified to that day – this is the testimony, you can check with them to verify – they said that pharmaceutical companies spend more time on advertising than research. And yet, they use research as a reason as why prices are so high in the United States versus other countries.
They also have said, when they see these ads on TV and they go to the doctor, and the doctor prescribes something that is affordable, they, ‘no I want that thing that I saw on TV.’ So it has an escalating in cost impact.
When we passed the Affordable Care Act, if we had no other reason to do it, it was about cost. Cost to the family, cost to the individual, cost the small business, cost to corporate America, cost to local, state and federal government. The costs were unsustainable.
With the bill, we were able to lower the rate of increase, but the reason we couldn’t eliminate the rate of increase was because of the cost of prescription drugs.
So again, the most important thing is that this has an impact on individuals that have to cut their medicine in half or skip a day or whatever it is and have an impact on their health.
But as we have said in the Better Deal, the Better Deal being part of our Better Jobs, Better Pay, Better Future – part of that is to lower the cost to families in terms of their ongoing costs and prescription drugs being the main one.
We all believe in the National Institutes of Health, the biblical power to cure. But we want those cures to be available to everyone. That’s what it’s about. And we think an obstruction to that is the costs. I could read you a list, which I’m not going to right now, 500% increase, 1000% increase, why?
So our challenge is to the president. Don’t pull your punch. We’ve waited almost a year and half to see what your proposal is, hope it is worth waiting for. But remember we have high standards because of the high costs. Thank you.
Congressman Welch. I just want to add one thing. It is not an accident that we have escalating prices constantly. That’s a result of government policy. Looking the other way, giving monopoly pricing power, not giving ant-trust, it is a result of policies that are friendly to the owners of the medicine, so that they can price however much they want. And the question tomorrow for you to ask, is ‘will the President acknowledge that there has to be government enforceable policies to protect consumers?’ Anything less than concrete governmental policies that every other country has to protect against price gouging means that you’re siding with pharma and against the consumer.
Leader Pelosi. Just one more point on that. In six for ’06, in ’06 when we won the Congress, we had six points that we said we would do when we were elected, and we did pass them all in the House. Five of them became law, only one of them did not, enabling the Secretary of HHS to negotiate for lower prices. We’ve been fighting this fight for a long time, this is nothing new and that’s why we’re trying again. Where the public is so much more aware of how egregious these increases are, and so it’s about that enabling to negotiate and secondly having transparency in all of this.
We have some other suggestions, I refer you to our website for our Better Deal on Prescription Drugs.
Congressman Doggett. And with your leadership, every single Democrat plus 23 Republicans voted for that bill here in the House, for that very same negotiation that you’re calling for here. That day could come again. It could start again. But it might take ‘til next January
Leader Pelosi. I hope not! The sooner the better. Thank you, everyone.