Mr. President, my timing couldn't have been better than to have arrived on the floor of the Senate after the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, had given a speech on the cost of drugs in America. I have the rest of the story, the other side of the story, that he has just delivered. He spoke about prescription drug socialism. I want to talk about the unfairness of pharmaceutical pricing to Americans, to families, and across the board. People have talked about the cost of prescription drugs being too high for as long as I can remember; but last week, President Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress marked a milestone in fulfilling a commitment to start bringing down the outrageous price of prescription drugs. For years, Americans have paid the highest prices in the world-- in the world--for medications. We pay an average of nearly four times more than other Western countries for exactly the same drugs made by the same companies. Last year, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which Senator McConnell calls prescription drug socialism, the Democrats finally delivered for America's patients, granting Medicare the power to negotiate fair prices for medications used by seniors. He made the point; I want to make it again. Not a single Republican Senator voted in favor of bringing down prescription drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act. Not one. Not one Republican Senator would join us.…
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