Chuck Grassley: “I want to welcome the new Senator from Virginia to the Senate. I look forward to serving with him. I am sorry that maybe…”

“I want to welcome the new Senator from Virginia to the Senate. I look forward to serving with him. I am sorry that maybe the Senator's first time being in the chair he has to listen to my speech, but I am very glad to have the opportunity to speak to you and Members of the body and the people of the United States about a very important issue that is going to be coming before us. This is an issue that I have been speaking about for the last several days on the floor. In fact, I think 4 days last week I did. I talked about the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the so-called prohibition on Government negotiation with drugmakers for low prices. I spent time doing that because people need to understand that some proposals could have drastic consequences, not only for Medicare and the beneficiaries of Medicare but also for anyone else who buys prescription medicine. I want to make this very clear because when you are talking about seniors and the disabled on Medicare, and on prescription drugs, you might get the impression that we make a decision here, and the only people it is going to affect are those on Medicare. But I hope I made it very clear last week, and I am going to go over this again today. In other words, if we change Medicare in this instance dealing with the prices of prescription drugs, it will increase prices of prescription drugs for everybody.”