Amy Klobuchar: “I thank the Senator from Virginia for his thoughtful remarks and the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, as well…”

“I thank the Senator from Virginia for his thoughtful remarks and the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, as well as Senator Smith, my colleague. The time for action is now. We have all cited numerous examples of people who, literally, are taking drugs that, in the case of insulin, was $17 a vial and is now $1,213 a month. That is simply outrageous. We have people who can't afford drugs that they used to just take as commonplace, and there were no changes made. So for me, a lot of this is what happens when you have monopolies, what happens when you don't have competition. So the answer is to look at all of the measures we could take to ensure that there is better price negotiation and more competition. One of them, as Senator Kaine mentioned, is Medicare negotiation, unleashing the power of 43 million Americans. That is a lot of people. Seniors are good at getting deals. That is 43 million people. Yet they are banned from negotiating with Medicare to get better deals for themselves. That should change. We need less expensive drugs from other countries--safe drugs. That would certainly create more competition. We had bipartisan support for a proposal like that. Senator Grassley and I have the bill that would take one country, Canada. In Minnesota and in the Presiding Officer's State of North Dakota we can see Canada from our porch. The point is that we see those less expensive drugs right across the border. We should be able to have that competition.…”