Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month
Floor Speech
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Madam Speaker, for the next hour, we will be talking about an issue that really confronts every American family, an issue that has brought devastation, fear, and sadness to virtually every family in this Nation.
We are going to talk about dementia and Alzheimer's. We are going to talk about the way in which it literally tears families apart as their loved one's mind, recollections, and ability to handle their own affairs seems to dissipate.has brought devastation, fear, and sadness to virtually every family in this Nation.
This is an issue that currently confronts around 5 million Americans and their families. This is an issue that will grow exponentially over the next 25 to 30 years to the point where maybe 16 million American families are going to be affected by it.
It is also an issue that we can deal with. It is an issue that we can see the cost. Let me put up this chart here, and we will talk about the cost of Alzheimer's quickly.
It is a crisis that is growing rapidly, and it is resulting in extraordinary cost increases. If you look at 2015, on Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Federal Government will spend $153 billion on Alzheimer's. In 2020, it will grow to $182 billion. And then it is anticipated--as one of our colleagues spoke during a 1-minute speech--that by 2050, it will grow to over $1 trillion. This is an issue for the Federal Government. It is an issue for every family.
Let me put up another little chart here that really displays what an investment by the American people can do. If you take a look at the reasons why people die most commonly in the United States--breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, stroke, HIV--you will notice that in every one of these, we have seen a decline in the mortality from these illnesses.
Breast cancer declining just marginally. Prostate cancer, a significant decline of around 11 percent. Heart disease declined by 14 percent; stroke by 21; and HIV, while still prevalent and still common, the death rate is down by more than 50 percent.
This one over here is Alzheimer's disease; a 71 percent increase in the number of deaths due to Alzheimer's.
My mother-in-law is in this statistic. She spent the last 2 years of her life living with my wife, Patty, and I in our home. We cared for her at night. We, fortunately, were able to have someone come in to help us during the day. And that is really the story of most Alzheimer's now. You are either in a nursing home or you are cared for in the home.
So among those 5 million out there, there are families, like mine, that are caring as best they can in a very difficult situation. Ours, fortunately, was not so difficult. But, nonetheless, after two-plus years, my mother-in-law did die.
So what can we do about it?
I want to put up one more chart here, and then I want to turn to my colleagues. If you will remember on that chart I just put up, death rates are declining for cancer. There is a reason. And the reason is the annual expenditure for cancer research has been just under $5.5 billion for the last few years. For HIV/AIDS, nearly $3 billion of research annually. Cardiovascular, heart disease, over $2 billion.
Alzheimer's, while the death rate climbs, we are spending just over $566 million--not billion, million. So we shouldn't be surprised when we see this: declines in the cancer rates, deaths from cancer, stroke, heart disease, HIV. And then Alzheimer's.
Mr. Speaker, $1 trillion will be spent in just 25 years on dealing with Alzheimer's, and some 16 million Americans will have that illness.
Now there is good news. The good news just happened today, and I want to commend my Republican colleague Tom Cole from Oklahoma, chairman of the Appropriations Health and Human Services Subcommittee, who moved to increase Alzheimer's research from $566 million to almost $900 million.
Go for it, Tom. You are the chairman of that subcommittee, and you are doing the right thing. You are doing the right thing by 5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's today, and you are doing the right thing for their families.
And I think House has the opportunity also to stand with Tom Cole and to do the right thing by Americans, and that is, increase this research funding.
There are breakthroughs that are coming. If you read the articles, if you read the scientific journals, we are coming to an understanding of this very, very difficult disease for which there is no early detection, for which there is no cure, and for which there is only one exit, and that is death. So we can deal with this.
The 535 of us, the Representatives of those 5 million Americans with Alzheimer's and their families, we can do something. We can increase the funding for research.
Tonight I am joined by several of my colleagues.
I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters) who carried legislation on this for years. She has been the co-chair of the Alzheimer's Caucus. If she will join us and share with us her work and what is happening from her perspective.
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I thank the gentlewoman from California who has been a leader in this disease and dealing with the problems of it for many, many years. And your work Ms. Waters is paying off. The work that you have done organizing us, Members of Congress, to petition the subcommittee paid off--a 50 percent increase, a 50 percent increase, and I think it has got a good chance of staying in. This is really really good news and the rest of the legislation piece by piece we are going to get at this.
I would like now to turn the time over to our colleague from New York Brian Higgins. We have spoken on this issue before. Mr. Higgins, thank you so very much. If you will share your thoughts with us on this disease and what we might do to deal with it.
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Mr. Higgins, thank you so very much. Your points are absolutely on target.
This little chart here points out much of what you and Ms. Waters were talking about, and that is the extraordinary expense. This is 2015. And we expect to spend $153 billion of Federal tax money, Medicare and Medicaid, on treating Alzheimer's. Way over, that little tiny purple spot, is the $566 million of research. It would be a little bigger if we were able to get that 300, but it is still going to pale in comparison to this. This is 261 times more money spent on treatment, which ultimately just enables the passage of time and leads to death because there is no effective treatment today. That is what we are spending on caring for people.
That number down there, and the efforts and the bills that have been introduced and the Alzheimer's Foundation and others that are working on this have an opportunity to change this entire dynamic around because we can find the solution to this.
I would like now to turn to my colleague, as part of what we often do here, we call it the ``East-West Show,'' my colleague from the great State of New York, Paul Tonko.
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Mr. Tonko, for more than 4 years now, you and I have stood on the floor on Special Order hour to talk about Make It In America, about the manufacturing system and about the jobs that we need to build, transportation infrastructure, and your passion for those subjects was so obvious. Your passion and your determination to deal with Alzheimer's and to find a cure, to find an understanding of what it is and how it affects the brain, and then also to reach out to the families that are caring for their loved ones really exceeds and mirrors the passion that you have for the working men and women of this Nation. I thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank the Alzheimer's Association. They organized a lobbying group through here very recently. They were wearing their purple ribbons, and they brought to us the stories, the individual stories that were of their families. I know that as I talked to my colleagues here on the floor and over in the Senate, I get the same thing from them: Yes, my mother, my aunt, my sister, my brother, they too have suffered from Alzheimer's, and they recently died, or they are in very serious condition.
So we find this illness touching every family. I have yet to find a family that I have talked to about Alzheimer's that didn't nod their head in understanding: Yes, we know what it is.
What Americans don't know is the information that you and my colleagues, Maxine Waters and Brian Higgins, brought to the floor today, and that is the facts, not only the impact that Alzheimer's has on the Federal budget--Medicare and Medicaid--the impact that it has on family budgets, on insurance, private insurance, but the impact that it has on families. You have made that clear.
I think that the work that has been done by Alzheimer's Association and related organizations--Medicare, Social Security, and support groups all across this Nation--is having an impact. When a budget for any specific program is increased by 50 percent in this era of sequestration, something has had an impact. Mr. Cole, as chairman of that, and Ms. Waters, as the chairperson or the vice chair, co-chair of the Working Group on Alzheimer's, are having an impact.
We can find a solution here. We can understand. We can do the early diagnosis. It is pretty clear there are some breakthroughs that are occurring.
There are certain drugs out there that seem to work if you can intervene early in the process. What a change that would be. What a change that would be for all families.
This is not just an issue of Alzheimer's, this is an issue of the brain. We have got the U.S. military, the Department of Defense, doing significant research on brain injuries, brain trauma, and illnesses resulting from the wars--from traumatic brain syndrome and related.
So if we pool together and we actually put into the Defense Authorization Act a paragraph that said: Research done by the Department of Defense on the brain, brain injuries, a way in which the brain works or doesn't work, they need to take that research and couple it with research that is taking place on dementia, on other kinds of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, and if we can pool all of these various research programs together and get them to share the information to fertilize each other's research, I think we are going to succeed.
That 2025 goal I think is too far out there. I see we are on the cusp of a breakthrough. And if we can push all of the research and focus it and, like a dart, hit the center of the target, I think we are going to be successful.
Mr. Tonko, would you like to join in here?
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Mr. Tonko, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for rounding up 180-plus Members of this House. On any issue that is tough, but then having them sign on to a piece of legislation that would advance the care that individuals receive and the support that families need.
The cure for Alzheimer's, all of those pieces of legislation, which Ms. Waters talked about, those are all pieces of the puzzle. And they deal with--I am going to end with just two charts, so it is really where I started. This is a different version of one of the charts that deals with the costs that we are talking about. These are the total cost in the system. If you take a look at it, 2015, you are talking about a quarter of a billion dollars, just under $226 billion, of which the great majority is Medicare and Medicaid, and then out-of-pocket and other payers, or the other insurance companies. It will rise each year until we get to 2050, which is not that far away. Thirty-five years out we will be well over $1 trillion, of which we will bust the bank, the Medicare.
There is a lot of discussion around here about the deficit. The real factors in the deficit are this health care issue. That is where we are going to find the budget deficit.
But we have already seen through the Affordable Care Act that the projected increases for Medicare have substantially reduced over the last 4 years as the Affordable Care Act is providing early diagnosis of heart disease, diabetes, other kinds of long-term illnesses that are really where most of the expense in Medicare and Medicaid occur. And if we can get a grip on Alzheimer's, if we can find a way of delaying the onset of it, we are going to save tens and, indeed, hundreds of billions of dollars over the passage of time.
And the next step is the cure. So they think, the researchers, think they can find a way of delaying the onset. As they do that, they will also find a way of dealing with the disease itself. Then this awesome and horrific expense will be reduced.
There is one other chart.
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Mr. Tonko, you continually come back to the compassion and caregiving that I think each human being has somewhere in them. For us here in Congress, it is to express that in a meaningful way. That meaningful way is to make sure there is support for those families and individuals who have Alzheimer's, those who are caring for them, to make sure that the medical treatment, such as it is for this illness, is available, and to pursue vigorously the research that could and, I believe, will lead to a complete understanding of the illness. That is our task.
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