Tim Ryan: “Let us break this down. If people are saying that Members are doing things or former Members, I want to correct myself…”

“Let us break this down. If people are saying that Members are doing things or former Members, I want to correct myself, former Members were doing things that would cost the government money or would spend money that otherwise would not be spent, that is a problem. And I think we have to look no further than the Medicare prescription drug bill that came out of this Congress. We were told the night at 3 in the morning, when we were voting, that this bill was going to cost $400 billion. We find out later that the actual cost of the bill is $700 billion, $300 billion more; and there is nothing in the bill to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. The Democrats, I know you remember this, the Democrats wanted to put a provision in the bill that would have allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down the drug prices on behalf of the Medicare recipients, so the Secretary of HHS would go to Merck and Pfizer and some of these other big drug companies and say, you know, if you want the Medicare prescription drug contract, we need to sit down and talk price. And not only did our friends on the Republican side not put that provision in, put the Democratic provision in there, they actual explicitly put in the bill that the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not allowed to negotiate down the drug prices.…”