Bernie Sanders

We need profound change in the industry and in PBMs.

The end result is, we have got to conclude, that there is an enormous amount of greed going on.

People are getting fed up with it. I got fed up with it 15 years ago.

That is a moral issue.

Different Members have touched on this. Let's not be naive. The drug companies, major drug companies last year made $100 billion in profit.

The goal of today's hearing is to find answers and to find solutions.

The savings are not always reaching the patient.

You have got to be able to afford the innovation.

We got a lot of work to do in this Committee. And the bottom line is we want to--we appreciate the work being done on insulin.

If Eli Lilly can lower the price of Humalog by 70 percent, why is it still charging the American people about $200,000 for Cyramza?

These are the questions that the American people are asking. They want to know why nearly half of all new drugs in America now cost over $150,000.

Somebody will correct me if I am wrong. I think it is less than $10 bucks.

In France, 20 years ago, the cost of Lantus was $40. Today it is $24, went down.

Let's be clear, while Americans pay outrageously high prices for prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry and the PBMs make enormous profits every year.

What I promised them is that they are not going to have to go to Canada or other countries to buy a lifesaving product.

The good news is that was a result of a lot of public pressure, we have recently seen the major drug companies substantially reduce their prices.

1.3 million Americans in the richest country on Earth cannot afford insulin.

If we paid the same prices for prescription drugs as major countries around the world were paying, we could save over $1 trillion in 10 years.

This Committee is not only going to be dealing with the crisis in insulin, we are going to do everything we can to end the outrage in which Americans, our people pay by far the highest prices in the world for virtually every brand name…

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly increased the price of Humalog 34 times since 1996, from $21 to $275.

I don't care whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever you are, all over this country, people are saying enough is enough.

History will never forget that we allowed this to happen, and, for us here in the United States, that we in fact enabled this ongoing atrocity.

What is the morality, and I want all three of you to respond to it, of us having a product that cost a few dollars to produce but not making it available to people around the world who are dying?

Senator Sanders' Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act as an 'open-source dividend.'

Do we all understand that the best drug in the world is meaningless if somebody can't afford it?