Prescription Drug Costs

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I would like to bring my colleagues up to date on a bipartisan bill to lower drug prices and also, at the same time, give an update on the pharmaceutical industry's opposition to this legislation.

Beware the next time Big Pharma claims what we are trying to do to lower drug prices, in their words, ``undermines the free market.'' Just remember this. The pharmaceutical industry supported ObamaCare.

Big Pharma doesn't want a free market. Take note that this industry opposes every proposal that would cost it money and supports every proposal that ensures another government revenue stream. That is exactly what ObamaCare did and that is what Medicare and Medicaid do now.

Big Pharma has become so big and entitled that they have the gall to claim that limiting taxpayer subsidies is somehow socialism. ObamaCare has a stream that does that, as does Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, this is what ending corporate welfare and demanding accountability to taxpayers is all about. It seems to me that ending those subsidies would be a very conservative principle.

The Grassley-Wyden prescription drug bill saves tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money and has no negative impact on pharmaceutical innovation. That is exactly what the CBO has said and that is why even the free-market, libertarian CATO Institute has endorsed this legislation.

So I encourage my Republican colleagues to join me and Senator Wyden in that bipartisan effort.

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