Frank Pallone

The wide availability of flavored e-cigarette products clearly designed for kids' consumption are putting the interests of industry above the health of our kids.

More than one in four high school students say they have used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.

I firmly believe that many aspects of the youth vaping epidemic could have been addressed if the FDA had moved forward with reviewing all e-cigarettes on the market.

I am also very frustrated by the fact that e-cigarette usage has reached epidemic proportions in recent years among kids.

The burden is on e-cigarette companies to demonstrate that these products meet FDA's health standard.

I really do hope the United States is as smart as these other countries and as smart as I am.

H.R. 3 contemplates the use of, and I quote, 'average international market price, or AIM price, to serve as a negotiation boundary for the Secretary.'

I don't see any reason why we in the United States, which are funding most of the research and development, should be paying three to four times what other countries are paying for exactly that same drug.

The number-one-selling drug in 2017 was Harvoni, which is a drug that takes care of hepatitis C. It was $1,100 per dose in the United States. It was $438 in Japan.

On average, how much more do consumers in the U.S. pay for these sole-source drugs than consumers in other large countries?

Humira, an anti-inflammatory therapy without a generic on the market and the best-selling prescription drug in the world, has doubled in price in the U.S. since 2012.

Single-source, brand-name drugs that lack generic competition represent one of the largest categories of drug spending growth in the Medicare Part D program.

There's a way to make the free market work for consumers.

I think it is unfortunate that you were forced to pursue the Speaker's strategy and not let our productive, bipartisan discussions continue.

But now we have before us a partisan plan that puts politics over progress.

We wanted and still want to work with you on addressing this issue for the American people.

That has to come out. There has to be a process of negotiating. Otherwise, I don't know how we are going to effectively bring prices down.

It ends the gouging of American consumers by establishing a maximum fair price on what we are willing to pay for prescription drugs based on what other countries are paying for the same drugs.

Americans pay three, four, or 10 times the amount what people in other countries pay for the exact same drug, and that's not fair.

Today, we are beginning the process of finally giving the Federal Government the ability to negotiate lower prescription drugs prices for the American people.

H.R. 3 includes many provisions that President Trump and other Republican have publicly supported.

I want H.R. 3 to be a bipartisan bill because I want it to become law.

When many seniors live on an annual income of only $26,000, bringing out-of-pocket costs down to $2,000 per year from as much as $5,100 could be a godsend.

H.R. 3 prioritizes insulin as first on the list to be negotiated.

It is time for Congress to take bold and decisive action to reduce prescription drug prices for all Americans.