Mark Udall: “Mr. Speaker, Juanita Johns is one of my constituents back in the Second District in Colorado, and she told me she used…”

“Mr. Speaker, Juanita Johns is one of my constituents back in the Second District in Colorado, and she told me she used to keep her thermostat at 60 degrees so she could pay her drug bills. In addition to that, a few times a week she would visit the food bank so she could eat, and eventually she sold her house and moved in with her son so she could afford her medicines. Now this is intolerable. Seniors should not be forced to make that kind of decision between buying food or buying their medicine or paying their utility bills. Her story, Juanita's story, is one of many that I have heard from seniors in my district. I, too, had a study done by the House Committee on Government Reform that found that seniors in my district who pay for their own prescription drugs pay more than twice what the drug companies' most-favored customer, such as HMOs and the Federal Government, pay. It is clear that rising prescription drug prices and eroding coverage are squeezing seniors' incomes.”