Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
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Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am back on the floor on this, as I have been over the course of the last decade, because we have been like a yo-yo in my State of Florida on the importation of drugs, since we have quite a few senior citizens in our State. They have been accustomed to either going to Canada and bringing back prescriptions at half the price or phoning Canada to pharmacies and having those drugs shipped in the Postal Service or e-mailing to Canadian pharmacies. What happened over the course of the last 8 or 9 years is that the previous administration cracked down on the reimportation of these drugs. Of course, that was at a great expense to our senior citizens who can buy these drugs at roughly 1/2 of what they pay by going into the pharmacies in the United States.
Then an interesting thing happened along about 2006. This Senator started getting multiples of calls--I think up to something like 100 complaints in that 1 year from senior citizens who had purchased the drugs, either by e-mail, telephone, or by going personally there and having them shipped. And lo and behold, under the previous administration, they gave the order to the Postal Service to confiscate these drugs. This happened, for example, to a couple from Mt. Dora, FL, Mr. and Mrs. Lee Eads. They had their drugs confiscated. We went after the Postal Service. We went after the Customs Bureau. We found, in fact, that a lot of these complaints we had received, those drugs had been confiscated when, in fact, the policy was supposed to be if it was pharmaceuticals for personal use--and they defined that as less than a 90-day supply--the government, the U.S. Government, was going to let these senior citizens take advantage of getting that cost break of a 50-percent reduction.
It took us till late 2006--getting into this with Mr. and Mrs. Eads as the poster couple who had been getting their prescription drugs and then, all of
a sudden, they were confiscated--to get the Postal Service and Customs to reverse. This has supposedly been the policy, but we can't get it etched into law because people keep bringing up this Trojan horse that it is not safe. The very manufacturers we are buying our prescriptions from here in American pharmacies are the same manufacturers in identical locations with identical labeling of the drugs that are going to Canadian pharmacies. Why can't we give our senior citizens a break?
Of course, what this Senator would like to do is to give them a bigger break. This Senator has an amendment, which is continuously being stated that I may not get to offer, that would cause the pharmaceutical industry to give discounts on the drugs sold under Medicare that are being sold to 6 million people who are eligible because of their low income for Medicaid but get their drugs through Medicare. Those 6 million people, Medicaid, poor people who are eligible to get government assistance, used to have a discount, a substantial discount. Therefore, the U.S. Government was paying less for the drugs it bought for those people. But 6 years ago, when the prescription drug benefit was passed, those 6 million people were suddenly made ineligible to get the drug discount because they were now getting their drugs under Medicare. That is absolutely ridiculous, that the U.S. Government is going to pay full price for the drugs now that they used to pay only a fraction.
How much is that worth? According to CBO and the amendment I offered in the Finance Committee that was defeated 10 to 13, that is worth $106 billion over 10 years that would be savings to the American taxpayer that we would be paying for those dual eligibles, Medicaid recipients who get their drugs in Medicare, $106 billion of savings that the U.S. Government would not have to pay for those drugs, if we followed the same policy we did back there before this prescription drug benefit for Medicare.
That kind of makes common sense, doesn't it, that we would want to save the American taxpayer $106 billion? But we were defeated by a vote of 13 opposed to the amendment and 10 in favor in the Finance Committee.
I know it is a tall order to bring this amendment out here on the floor and have to meet a 60-vote threshold, because 41 Senators can deny the American taxpayer from getting $106 billion of savings. One of the good things about our bill that has come to the floor is, we are going to reduce the deficit by $130 billion. That is over a 10-year period. That is a good thing. But if we would accept my amendment, we could reduce the deficit by $236 billion or we could use part of it--say, half--to fill the rest of the doughnut hole that the AARP would like and so would this Senator. The AARP strongly supports my amendment. They have made it clear to the leadership of this Senate that they want to see that doughnut hole closed. But there is nothing coming out here on the floor that is going to do that.
The amendment Senator Dorgan has offered, which in and of itself is good policy, reimporting drugs at half the cost from Canada, is a step in the right direction, but that doesn't close the doughnut hole.
So here we are at a decision point. Who are we going to serve? Let me say at the outset I understand the political dynamics. I want to give credit where credit is due. The pharmaceutical industry is, in fact, supporting the leadership in trying to pass this bill. That is a good thing. We appreciate that very much. We need their support because we have all these other interest groups that are flaking off. At the end of the day, we have to get 60 votes in order to pass health care reform. That includes health insurance reform. We have the insurance industry totally, flat out trying to kill this legislation. I am grateful to the pharmaceutical industry for trying to help us. Therefore, my plea is, there has to be a balance. There has to be a compromise in the works. There has to be a way of the pharmaceutical industry stepping to the plate to help us totally fill the doughnut hole, that gaping $3,000 hole seniors have to pay for all of the drugs they need when they reach that level. There has to be a sweet spot, a compromise.
I certainly support the Dorgan amendment. I hope the Senate will favorably consider my amendment later on.
I yield the floor.
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