On the Senate floor, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) promoted legislation to lower pharmaceutical costs.
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00:00Madam President, American families are struggling with the cost of living, and one of the biggest
00:08challenges they face is the incredibly high cost of prescription drugs. Now, last week,
00:15President Trump signed a new executive order that tries to implement international reference
00:20pricing on prescription drugs for Americans. At his press conference, President Trump called
00:28up pharmaceutical companies for, quote, price gouging, which he described as, quote, a great
00:34American rip-off. Madam President, I agree with President Trump. Prescription drugs are too
00:43expensive in America, and we are getting ripped off, and there is no reason that pharmaceutical
00:50companies should charge American patients more than they charge people in other countries.
00:57And these excessive price gouging practices have forced many Americans to pay four times
01:05or five times, even six times, for the same life-saving medications as folks in other countries
01:11pay. There's absolutely no justification for that. Now, in the last Congress, the Inflation
01:19Reduction Act was a significant step towards combating big pharma's price gouging and lowering
01:26prices for American patients. That act allowed Medicare the ability to negotiate drug prices
01:34for the first time ever. By the way, that's something that all other countries do. They protect
01:39their citizens from price gouging. That bill meant 20,000 Vermonters who take one or more of the first
01:4610 drugs selected by Medicare for negotiation will see lower prices starting in 2026. That can't come
01:55soon enough. Over 27,000 Vermonters will save an average of $600 annually, thanks to the $2,000 annual
02:06out-of-pocket cost cap that began in January of 2025. The Inflation Reduction Act will save senior
02:14Vermonters on Medicare a total of more than $21 million on prescription drugs.
02:22But when you're the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, you've got a lot of tricks up your sleeve
02:29to thwart any policy that cuts in your profits. One of big pharma's favorite refrains is that reference
02:38pricing, where we pay essentially the same as everybody else pays, not five times more, will put
02:45a strain on research and innovation. That is false. The fact of the matter is that over two decades, the
02:54world's largest biopharmaceutical companies have spent way more on advertising and way more on
03:02administrative costs, including by the way multi-million dollar CEO pay packages, than they have spent
03:10on research and development. And by the way, what they do spend on research and development is subsidized
03:18by taxpayers. So while pharma is doing these maneuvers to keep prices up, real people are hurting.
03:27On average, Americans spend over $1,400 on prescription drugs every year. That's the highest per capita spending
03:37in the world. And it's one of the reasons why health care costs are so high. By the way, not just
03:43with the cost for Medicaid and Medicare, but for employers who care about their employees and are
03:49fighting against ever increasing insurance premiums that makes that almost out of reach or makes them
03:57make a decision between increasing pay which workers want and workers need and maintaining health care
04:03benefits that workers want and workers need. And you know, there's a part of this that I think is really
04:11sad and particularly cruel on the part of pharma. They have this incredible pricing power that comes in
04:18part because of the patent that they are granted. It comes in part because there is a
04:23market that's created through taxpayers with Medicare and Medicaid. But it is exploited because
04:30what pharma knows is what you and I know. If a member of your family, if your partner,
04:38a person you love, is in need of a medication, you'll do whatever it takes. You'll get a second
04:46mortgage if you have a home. You'll postpone getting a car that you need.
04:52You'll go into your retirement savings. Whatever it takes. So this predatory practice of taking
05:01advantage of the love one American has for another to exploit on the pricing side is, in my view, quite
05:10outrageous. But the cruelty of this situation is that you can have folks in Vermont, just
05:17miles from the border in Canada, where right over across the border, folks are paying five times
05:26less than what we pay on the Vermont side of the border. And I've heard from so many folks, and I'll bet
05:34you've heard similar stories, Madam President, who've told me the story of dealing with, in this case,
05:42type 1 diabetes. And they're trying to get their mental health back in a better place. The medication
05:48they were put on at the beginning of the year was helping, but the cost more than tripled suddenly.
05:54And they can't afford to pay 800 bucks a month. Yet they're worried about a relapse.
06:00And that story isn't unique. Everyday folks in Vermont, in red and blue states across the country,
06:06are paying more for their drugs than the same folks are paying for in other countries. And by the way,
06:13one of the things that I find so compelling about this is we agree, both sides of the aisle,
06:18that costs for Americans are too high. We agree, both sides of the aisle, that folks need
06:24health care. And we do agree, most of us, that the pharma prices are way too high.
06:31So this is something, my view, we can and should do together. The Inflation Reduction Act has reigned
06:38in pharma's abusive tactics, but only minimally, by forcing them to the table for the first time.
06:46That's good, but we need to do more. You know, Trump's executive order is implying the poke it with
06:53a stick strategy, announcing a new policy and waiting to see what happens. His new executive order will
07:01face the same practical challenges this time around, as it did in Trump's first administration.
07:08From pharmaceutical companies looking to obscure their pricing margins. You know, they tell us how
07:14tough times are, even as on the phone calls with Wall Street analysts, they're saying how wonderful times are.
07:22And we have to face up to that in order, as Congress, to support a lower price approach,
07:32which includes negotiation and includes reference pricings.
07:34You know, patients across the country who can't afford these drugs need it now. They need them now,
07:42not in 10 years. And you know, the American people, they do want action in lowering prescription drug
07:49prices. And for the life of every person I talked to in Vermont, and I'm sure this is true with the
07:55folks you talked to in Florida, they just can't understand why we have to pay five times more than
08:03folks in other countries. And they particularly can't understand it when our taxpayers have provided
08:10much of the funding for research that went into the creation of these drugs in the first place.
08:16I'm very proud to join with my colleague from Missouri, Senator Holley, in introducing bipartisan legislation
08:26that will offer relief for millions of patients by prohibiting pharmaceutical companies from selling
08:34drugs here in the United States at higher prices than the international average. Very basic, very fair.
08:43Our bill will put an end to big pharma's practice of forcing Americans to pay the highest prices in the
08:51world for medications. The bottom line is that President Trump has issued an executive order that I support.
09:01My hope is that he's going to follow through because we are going to need the leadership of the President
09:07of the United States and the influence he has in Congress to get us on both sides of this capital to
09:17get international reference pricing and to make more progress on price negotiation. All for the goal of
09:24making life-saving medications more accessible to folks on Medicare, folks on Medicaid, to folks who have
09:32access to private insurance and also to bring down the cost for our employers who are facing relentless
09:38upward spikes in health care premiums. So I'll extend the same challenge to President Trump that he extended to
09:49the pharmaceutical companies. Let's get real. As President Trump put it in his inimitable way,
09:55don't get cute about avoiding the responsibility we have to bring down prescription drug prices.
10:03So I call on my colleagues and I call on President Trump to follow words with actions. We've got to
10:13follow through on this debate. We know how to do it. To bring down big pharma's prices and stand up to their
10:24greed and support the Holly-Welch bill to ensure that no one in America ever faces an impossible choice
10:31between paying for prescriptions that they need or putting food on the table or paying the rent or
10:38fixing a broken down car. Madam President, I yield back.