Tim Ryan: “Forty-six million don't have anything now, and millions of others can't afford it, or can barely afford what they have.…”

“Forty-six million don't have anything now, and millions of others can't afford it, or can barely afford what they have. So our goal on the Democratic side is to figure out how to reduce the cost of health care. And we tried to do that, Mr. Meek, when we had the prescription drug bill here. The Democrats, this bill started out at $400 billion, and later after the vote we found out it was $700 billion. But all the seniors that are out there, Mr. Meek, will qualify for this, $700 billion worth. What the Democrats wanted to do to save the taxpayer money, to be accountable for the money that we spend here, the Democrats wanted to put two provisions on to that Medicare part D, the prescription drug bill. We wanted to allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to be able to negotiate down the drug price on behalf of all the Medicare recipients. We didn't want to create a new program, a new bureaucracy. We just wanted to give the Secretary of HHS the ability to go to Pfizer and negotiate down the drug price. You want the Medicare contract? Fine. We got to talk price. Knock 15 to 20 percent off the cost and we will give it to you. Boom, we save money, Democrats. That is our idea. The Republican majority shot it down in the dead of night. The other idea, we wanted to allow for reimportation of pharmaceuticals, to allow these prescription drugs to come in from Canada to create real competition in the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and drive down the cost.…”