Sherrod Brown: “When you talk about cost savings, you can talk about a lot of things but the greatest opportunity we have to save money…”

“When you talk about cost savings, you can talk about a lot of things but the greatest opportunity we have to save money for the Medicare program is to put the prescription drug benefit inside Medicare and then use the buying power of 39 million Medicare beneficiaries to bring the price down. That is what the Canadians do. That is what the French and the Germans and the Japanese and the Israelis and the Brits do. They use the buying power of millions of seniors, of millions of citizens in their country to get the price down. That is why Americans pay two and three and four times the price of prescription drugs that anybody else in the world pays. But probably the reason for that is, again, as the insurance industry, it goes back to who is helping the Republican Party. The drug industry has already given $60 or $70 million to President Bush's campaign and to House Republicans and Senate Republicans. That is why this prescription drug benefit, H.R. 1, and every other House bill that comes to this floor sponsored by the Republican leadership will never deal with the high cost of prescription drugs simply because the drug industry, who frankly is way, way too influential in this body, the drug industry simply will not let my Republican friends bring a bill to floor that will cost them a lot of money.”