On the recordApril 9, 2014
I appreciate that, to my good friend from south Georgia. You know, it is amazing. In those communities that you just spoke of, they need the help--not that they are asking for a handout. They are just asking for fairness, and I think that is what we miss so often today in our debates here on this floor, and they should be on this floor. We talk about one group against the other, and really, Madam Speaker, this is about fairness. This is a simple issue of fairness and saying we in the government need to be in our proper constitutional role and to look at it in the framework of not tilting the scale one way or another, but saying what are we doing that helps the American people and also looking ahead to--especially in an area such as health care in which we can find common ground; and I believe we will as we go forward here. So when we are talking about Medicare Part D and some of the proposed changes of CMS to Part D, it is really the need for generic drug reimbursement limits, known as maximum allowable costs, or MACs. Generic drugs account for nearly 80 percent of prescriptions, but a community pharmacist is kept in the dark as to how pharmacy benefit managers determine MAC rates for these medications. You see, Congress and CMS must step in to give pharmacists more transparency into this process, so they are empowered to evaluate if specific contracts would help them better serve our neighborhoods and families.…
