Robert Torricelli: “the Senate is engaged in probably the most important health care debate in a generation. If we succeed in establishing a…”

“the Senate is engaged in probably the most important health care debate in a generation. If we succeed in establishing a pharmaceutical benefit for the American people, it will be the greatest contribution to health care since Medicare. We are engaged in this debate in the middle of an economic and corporate crisis. It would not be honest or even productive to pretend that one event is taking place without the backdrop of the other. It is an extraordinary time to be redesigning the delivery system of an industry while corporate America is going through a series of tumultuous events. I have an amendment prepared that I will offer to this legislation that is the nexus between the two problems because the pharmaceutical industry requires a transparency and a proper accounting of itself in the delivery and pricing of its products, just as certainly a variety of other American industries have suffered from their failure to do the same. I address specifically two persistent problems. First, when an American family goes to a pharmacy to buy a prescription product, they operate under the assumption that they are getting sound medical advice, that the prescription that is being offered to them is suited for their problem, their malady, it is priced properly, and a medical judgment is being made on the merits. That is the assumption of every American family. It may not always be sound.”