Sheila Jackson Lee: “Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Jackson Lee Amendment to the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Prices Now Act.…”

“Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Jackson Lee Amendment to the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Prices Now Act. Let me also express my thanks to the chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction for their hard work in crafting this critically important legislation: Chairman Pallone of Energy and Commerce; Chairman Neal of Ways and Means; and Chairman Scott of Education and Labor. The Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Prices Now Act levels the playing field for American patients and taxpayers by: 1. Giving Medicare the power to negotiate directly with the drug companies and creating powerful new tools to force drug companies to the table to agree to real price reductions, while ensuring seniors never lose access to the prescriptions they need. 2. Making the lower drug prices negotiated by Medicare available to Americans with private insurance, not just Medicare beneficiaries. 3. Stopping drug companies from ripping off Americans while charging other countries less for the same drugs and limiting the maximum price for any negotiated drug to be in line with the average price in countries like ours; 4. Creating a new, $2,000 out-of-pocket limit on prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries; and 5. Reinvesting in most transformational improvement to Medicare since its creation--delivering vision, dental and hearing benefits--and turbocharging the search for new cures. High drug prices are harmful.…”