Bill Clinton: “Well, one problem is that older people who are eligible for Medicare, but not poor enough to be on Medicaid, don't have…”

“Well, one problem is that older people who are eligible for Medicare, but not poor enough to be on Medicaid, don't have their prescription drugs covered. So you have this ironic development that older people who have serious medical problems and require expensive medicine who are on Medicare might actually have lower incomes--real incomes--than some people on Medicaid. And it's a big gap in our health care system, and it's one that I'm going to try to see that we address now. Let me say, you may have seen on the other end of the age spectrum, I've been in somewhat of a dispute with some of the drug companies because I want to immunize all the children in our country. But only about half of our 2-year-olds are immunized against serious diseases. That's a very serious thing. And I'm coming back to the drug problem. Let me bring you back around to this, because it's very important that you understand this. And we save $10 later for every $1 we invest now in immunizations of children for preventable diseases. And yet, a lot of vaccines made in America sell for lower prices overseas than they sell in America. Now, if you look at the price of vaccines--for a lot of these vaccines, the most expensive price goes to the family doctor who buys them. That's why the cost of getting your shots has gone from about, oh, $10 to over $200 if you just go to a family doctor and get all the baby's shots. Right? Next cheapest is, State government can buy vaccines in bulk. The next cheapest is, the Federal Government can buy even bigger--vaccines-- and we buy through a Federal agency about 40 percent of the vaccines in the country, and then we give them out to the States. And then the States that have good public health networks, they give them out, and those shots are the cheapest of all. But even cheaper than that are some of these same vaccines made by American companies sold in foreign countries. Now, that all sounds terrible. Let me say one or two things, since I've been fighting with the drug companies, in defense of them. They're a very important part of our economy. They do a wonderful job in finding new drugs to solve problems. They have to spend a fortune to do all the research and development. The problem is that to sell those vaccines in other countries, these other countries are tougher on them, and because they want everybody immunized, they drive down the cost of the vaccines. So Americans are paying the whole research and development costs for people who benefit from these drugs all over the world, because the companies can't collect other places. Another problem is that we have more lawsuits in this country, so we add about $4 a vial to the vaccines to put into a fund against the possibility that some child might have a reaction. So they would always be somewhat more expensive. But we have got to find a way to work with the drug companies. They do very well, I want to emphasize. They are some of our best companies. But we've got to find a way to deal with these two huge problems. One is older people, particularly, paying huge prices for drugs that have been developed for some time, that are not experimental drugs. I think we'd all admit we should pay more for experimental drugs; that's got all the research cost in it. And the second is children in America paying more for vaccines than children in other countries, even though they were made here. And we're trying to work through that, and I think we're going to make some progress on it. Health Care Reform”