Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise with many of my colleagues today to mark a new era for patients in this country. Last year, we decided that enough is enough, and we put an end to the sweetheart deal that let drug companies charge seniors on Medicare whatever they wanted for some of the most common lifesaving and life- improving prescription meds on the market. Now the Big Pharma companies are trying to stop this legislation with absurd lawsuits. I will talk about that effort in a moment, but for now, let me say unequivocally that allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices is a victory for seniors, a victory for taxpayers, a victory for patients and their families, and a victory for America. Mr. President, thank you for your work on this as the Senator from Vermont. When you were the House Member for Vermont, you led this bill in the House, and I led it in the Senate. We worked together to allow for negotiation on drugs. Finally, this bill has been passed into law as part of larger legislation. A number of our colleagues, including Senator Wyden of Oregon, have long been leaders on this issue. I think we all know this progress could not have come soon enough. We know that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the same brand name prescription drugs. In fact, prescription drug prices in the United States are more than 250 percent higher than drug prices in other industrialized countries. Not only are prices sky high, we have all watched them get higher.…”