Roger Marshall: “I thank Congressman Carter for his leadership as a community pharmacist. You and I have worked together in different…”

“I thank Congressman Carter for his leadership as a community pharmacist. You and I have worked together in different cities but on the same projects trying to help patients out. And here we are gathered in Congress now for this same purpose. I thought I might talk about Alzheimer's disease for a little bit this evening. It is hard to imagine that over 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. And I bet there is not a person in this room, a person at home watching, that doesn't have a loved one that they have watched them suffer and go through the stages of Alzheimer's disease--5 million Americans. And it is hard to imagine, in three decades we are going to have 14 million Americans with Alzheimer's. For the sake of humanity, we need a drug to cure this. And you and I both know that we are truly this close, that there are medications in the pipeline that are going to help treat Alzheimer's. The economic impact of this disease on our country is also extraordinary. Right now, we are spending about $300 billion a year treating Alzheimer's patients. Again, in three decades, it is going to be over a trillion dollars a year. A medication that would cure Alzheimer's is going to save this country, literally, trillions of dollars. When I go back home, people ask me a couple of things. Number one is, they want us to lower the cost of healthcare, to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But they also want us to balance the Federal budget.…”