Providing for Consideration of H.R. Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Affordable Insulin Now Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I support this bill's relief for Mary in Austin whose grandson, like so many others, will be able to get some relief. They are paying up to $300 per month for insulin, and now they would pay $35 per month.

But 5\1/2\ million Texans and 28 million Americans are uninsured. This bill offers them no help whatsoever. In our upside-down healthcare system, those who have the least continually get asked to pay the most for essential pharmaceuticals. Sixty-eight percent of those without health insurance are forced to pay full monopoly prices for their essential insulin. They are being denied any relief today, despite the fact that I and 12 of my colleagues offered a simple amendment that could have provided that assistance.

Nor does this bill represent the slightest progress toward preventing prescription price gouging. It is so true, as many have said, that many Americans are paying 10 times the price for insulin as do consumers in other countries. This bill does not do anything, however, to lower it to nine times. Indeed, this bill does not lower the price of insulin by one penny, it just shifts the burden of paying for the insulin off the shoulders of insured insulin users, and shifts it on to the rest of us who are paying insurance premiums, and will pay higher premiums because of this, and $11 billion more in costs to the taxpayers.

Mr. Speaker, I assume Big Pharma supports this bill because it is not facing any additional duty to lower its prices for this lifesaving product. Some day this Congress will break free of the shackles of Big Pharma, which fills these halls with more lobbyists than there are Members of Congress.

Some day we will provide genuine relief to all Americans burdened by soaring drug prices, but that day, sadly, is not today.

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