Deborah Koff Ross: “The gentleman from Tennessee makes an excellent point about how we have gotten into this mess with these record…”

“The gentleman from Tennessee makes an excellent point about how we have gotten into this mess with these record deficits. This Republican Congress, this administration, gave us a so-called Medicare part D prescription drug plan. We all want our seniors to be able to have access and be able to afford the medicine that they so desperately need. I thought that we were going to pass a bipartisan meaningful benefit for our seniors, but instead we passed a bill that was written by the big drug manufacturers. In fact, the chairman of the committee writing the bill at the time left the committee and took a multimillion dollar job as the head of PhRMA, the association in Washington D.C. that represents the big drug manufacturers. Now, every State in America, through its Medicaid programming was negotiating with the drug manufacturers to reduce the cost that those States paid for the Medicaid program. When this Medicare part D program became law, they shifted Medicare- eligible seniors that were poor enough to be on Medicaid away from Medicaid and on to Medicare and into a bill that actually has language in the legislation. I thought this was going to be a bill to help our seniors with the high cost of medicine. But this legislation included language that said the Federal Government shall be prohibited from negotiating with the big drug manufacturers to bring down the high cost of medicine.…”