Sylvester Turner: “tonight we come to the floor to talk about an issue that many of my Democratic colleagues have been talking about for…”

“tonight we come to the floor to talk about an issue that many of my Democratic colleagues have been talking about for over 2 years, the problem of high prices of prescription drugs for our senior citizens. We are here on the floor tonight at a very critical time, because at this very moment, in this late hour, the Committee on Ways and Means is meeting and debating the issue of legislation to provide prescription drug coverage for our senior citizens. Tonight I want to spend a little time talking about that debate and the forces that are at work that will determine what kind of prescription drug coverage and what kind of plan this Congress will endorse. We are here tonight on behalf of our senior citizens, and over the last 2 years I have visited and heard from many of them. I remember very distinctly when we first introduced the Prescription Drug Fairness Act, almost 2 years ago, and I traveled around my district talking about the issue with senior citizens at our local pharmacies, and I met a lady who ended up as a surprise at one of my meetings in Orange, Texas, a lady who was 84 years old and blind, who said she just had heard I was coming to town to talk about my efforts to try to fight the high prices of prescription drugs, and she wanted to come down and thank me. She was a lovely lady. She spent over half of her $700 Social Security check on her 14 prescription medicines that she had to take every day.”