Frank Pallone: “I always like to bring that up, and I am pleased that the gentleman did, because we always, or I tend to forget, and I…”

“I always like to bring that up, and I am pleased that the gentleman did, because we always, or I tend to forget, and I think a lot of my colleagues tend to forget that because prescription drugs really are preventive in nature, they actually save a lot of money. In all these calculations that we have to deal with in trying to figure out how much a prescription drug plan would cost, nobody ever calculates the fact that concerning some of the people the gentleman mentioned who cannot get prescription drugs now because they cannot afford it, we would prevent them from going to a hospital, we would prevent them from having to go to any kind of institution, and that saves the Federal Government a lot of money. Obviously, if the Federal Government has to pay $100 or $200 for a drug, but if that means somebody does not incur a $10,000 or $20,000 hospital bill, that is a savings to the Federal Government because Medicare is paying for that hospitalization. Instead of that, they pay for a couple hundred dollars for a prescription drug.”