Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. In conclusion, I thought I would try to simplify this about the prescription drug benefit. The Democrats are saying, all of us are saying, that what we want is a Medicare prescription drug benefit. That is, seniors would get their prescription drug benefit as part of the Medicare package. This is exactly what every Member of this House has through his or her own insurance, because everyone in this House has some plan through the Federal employees insurance, and it is a plan that you sign up for and other Federal employees get, and if they have prescription drug coverage, which I suspect almost everyone here does, they have it as part of the plan. If they have a Blue Cross plan, they have a Blue Cross prescription benefit; if they have an Aetna plan, they have an Aetna prescription benefit. All we are saying on the Democratic side of the aisle is, let us have a Medicare prescription drug benefit. And what the Republicans are saying is no, no, no, no, no, that would be wrong, because, after all, Medicare is a Federal health care plan. We would not want Medicare to provide a prescription drug benefit. That would be somehow wrong, because it is a government plan. That is nonsense. It is not right. It is absolutely not right. The benefit, the prescription drug coverage should come through Medicare. It is the health care plan for our seniors and our disabled people, and there is no excuse to try to create some Rube Goldberg system involving private insurance companies and HMOs as an alternative. But that is what the folks on the other side of the aisle have been trying to put over on the American people.

Mr. ALLEN. He did.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, let us turn just for a moment to another special interest, the HMO industry. This is a report done by the General Accounting Office that came out in August of this year, August 2000. The title is ``Medicare+Choice.'' That is the managed care plan. That refers to managed care plans that operate within the Medicare system. This was an approach to get HMOs into Medicare that the Republicans pushed very hard in 1997. It was incorporated into the Balanced Budget Act. I think a lot of us hoped that it might work, that it might drive down costs. But what this GAO study says, the title is ``Payments Exceed Cost of Fee-for-Service Benefits Adding Billions to Spending.'' This report concludes that although HMOs were allowed to come into Medicare on the theory that it would help reduce costs and expand benefits, it turns out that what has happened is the costs are higher for Medicare+Choice, for managed care and Medicare, than they are for the traditional fee-for-service benefit, the way Medicare has operated. So at this point you have to say what is the purpose of having HMOs operate under Medicare. Now, look at what we did just yesterday. Just yesterday, the Republican majority brought to the floor of this House a tax relief bill which had attached to it a whole array of different things, but one of the things was what we have been calling in Medicare a BBA give- back, a Balanced Budget Act give-back. Why was that brought to the floor? A lot of us had supported an earlier bipartisan version. Because when we go back to our districts, we hear from our hospitals, we hear from our home health care agencies, we hear from our long-term care agencies that what happened in 1997 was too severe, the cuts have been too great, there has got to be some restoration or we are going to find hospice programs, hospitals, nursing homes, and home health care agencies simply going out of business. So the bill that comes to the floor yesterday is a bill that gives $11 billion back not to hospitals and the other providers but to the HMOs over the first 5 years and $34 billion to the HMOs over 10 years. Now, what good does this do? Absolutely none. It does no good, because the money just goes to the HMOs. There is no accountability. There is no requirement that an HMO stay in a particular State, that it serve people it is serving now, that it serve people that it is not serving now. It is simply funneling money to an HMO industry, which just coincidentally gave $4.8 million to the to the Republican party and its candidates in 1999 through June of this year. Now, we have to be suspicious. When we have our providers, the hospitals and others saying we have to have some restoration of these funds, when we have a bipartisan group working on a plan and it is moving along well, and then at the last minute that bipartisan plan is yanked and we get something that puts 40 to 47 percent of the benefit of that give-back straight to the HMO industry, we have really got to wonder. The truth is this is again another case of whose side are they on. They can be on the side of seniors and can they help their providers, but they cannot do that and also be funneling money to the HMOs.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for his leadership on this issue, along with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner). We have been going at this now for over 2 years. It is interesting to watch in the public and in the debate in this chamber how the issue has taken form. It now has gotten so fuzed up, so complicated that we cannot blame people for having a tough time figuring what is going on, when under the surface it is actually very simple. Seniors pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world, and the adversaries, the people who are trying to keep them paying the highest prices in the world, is the pharmaceutical industry. The gentleman was talking a moment ago about the special interests. Because of the law that this Congress passed dealing with so-called section 527 organizations, we now have information that we did not have before. This group called Citizens for Better Medicare is a group that has been out there running ads now for about a year and a half now around the country. It is a wonderful name, is it not, Citizens for Better Medicare? The trouble is they are not citizens, it is the pharmaceutical industry, and they are not for better Medicare because they do not want Medicare to provide a prescription drug benefit. They want insurance companies and HMOs to provide that benefit. But we just have a report filed with the FED from Citizens for Better Medicare which shows that between July 1 of this year and September 30 of this year they spent $8.5 million running TV ads around the country. And if my colleagues look at what those TV ads are trying to do, they are trying to make black white and white black. What they are really doing is saying that the people who have been fighting for a Medicare prescription drug benefit are terrible and are not for seniors, and the people who have been fighting against a Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors are heroes. If we look at the legislation that we have been working on, the bill that I introduced, that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) has worked on, that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has been an advocate for for a long time, it is very simple, Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, that bill does not have any significant cost to the Federal Government. No new bureaucracy. Yet we have 152 cosponsors and not one Republican. Not one Republican will stand up and support giving a discount to Medicare beneficiaries so they can get the advantage of the best price to the Federal Government. Not one Republican is willing to stand up and support that approach. When we turn to the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which is where the government would help to pay for part of, not all but 50 percent of the initial cost of prescription drug prices for seniors, my recollection is that we do not have one single Republican on that bill; am I right?

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the overhead. It is very simple. Medicare is equitable. It covers everyone all over the country who qualifies for it. Medicare does not pick up and leave the State if it is not making money. This is a program that has continuity and predictability and stability. And get what? Its administrative costs are around three percent. When they go to the private sector to these HMOs and these insurance companies, they have got administrative costs that they do not have at all with Medicare. First of all, they pay their executives millions and millions of dollars. And there is no one in Medicare, no one at HCFA or anywhere else here who is being paid millions of dollars. And second, they have got to earn a profit. And third, they have got all sorts of marketing costs that Medicare would not have. So compared to the two to three percent administrative cost for Medicare, they have got 20 percent, 30 percent depending on the insurance company, they have got very big administrative costs. I want to bring this back to my home state. In Maine, as of July 1, there was a notice. We had only 1,700 people in Maine that were signed up for managed care. That is 1,700 people in Medicare signed up for managed care. And they all got a notice shortly after July 1 from the carrier saying that come December 31, the carrier was pulling out of the state. Two of those people were my parents. That was how they got their prescription drug coverage. Now they have got to go out and buy some other kind of supplemental insurance, but it will not be any managed care plan. So the benefits of HMOs and Medicare are now gone. There are none. There are going to be none in the State of Maine, and they will have to go find some Medigap policy. But the trouble with those policies is, A, they are expensive, and B, they have very limited coverage. They do not have anything like the kind of catastrophic coverage that is part of the Democratic plan, what Al Gore proposed, as a way to deal with prescription drugs. So I look at this so-called tax relief bill, this Balanced Budget Act give-back that we passed yesterday, and I know that that $34 billion over the next 10 years is not going to the State of Maine, it is not going to east Texas, it is not going to hospitals, it is not going to home health care agencies, it is not going to nursing homes; it is just going straight into the pockets of the HMOs. That is fundamentally wrong, fundamentally wrong. Here we are, trying to make sure that seniors, for whom health care is a real worry, the people I talk to, are very worried that their money is going to run out. They are very worried they are just not going to be able to take the prescription drugs that the doctors tell them they have to take. With all the anxiety, what this Republican Congress is doing is catering to the special interests, the pharmaceutical industry and the HMOs. It is wrong and it needs to change.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for yielding me. I would like to follow up what he has been saying, because it is not just the Republican leadership here, though they certainly have not brought to the floor, they have not helped the process of passing a Patients' Bill of Rights or certainly not fought for our seniors. But there is another group out there. The gentleman knows in the Fourth District in Arkansas, Citizens for Better Medicare is running television ads all across this country. Citizens for Better Medicare is a group, but it is not citizens, and they are not for better Medicare. Citizens for Better Medicare is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. And it is not the only organization that is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. What they are doing is trying to go out and make heroes of those who have been fighting against a prescription drug benefit for seniors and to attack those who have been supporting a Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors. The world is turned on its head and that little tag line under the TV ads which says ``Citizens for Better Medicare'' means that they are the pharmaceutical industry and they are going to do everything they can to stop seniors from getting a discount, stop seniors from getting a prescription drug benefit. The Republican National Committee is doing the same thing, trying to confuse the American people. There is an ad being run by the RNC, and it says that the Gore plan would force people into a big government HMO. Not true. There is no such animal as a big government HMO. The HMOs are the folks, the private sector, they are the folks who are allowed by the Balanced Budget Act to come into Medicare and offer managed care to Medicare beneficiaries around the country. My parents are two of the 1,700 people in Maine who are the last people to be covered by managed care under Medicare. And why? Because the managed care company could not make enough money in Maine, so they have pulled out. I will say one thing about Medicare. Medicare does not leave a State just because it is not making money. And the truth is if we are going to provide effective, reliable, voluntary prescription drug coverage for our seniors, it will only be through Medicare. Just contrast George W. Bush's plan. This is a plan which he calls ``Immediate Helping Hand.'' It is not immediate, and it is not much help, because here is how it works. For the first 4 years, there is $48 billion that will go to 50 different States to run 50 different programs to help only those who are low income. What is low income? Those who are taking in $14,500 a year or less. A widow earning $15,000 a year on Medicare, they wait. They wait for 4 years. And after 4 years, what they get to do under the Bush plan is call up an HMO who is operating in their State and hope that maybe, just maybe they will be providing a prescription drug plan. Now, the chances are slim that they will be, because one thing the health insurance industry has made clear is that they will not provide stand-alone prescription drug coverage, which is at the heart of the Republican effort in the House, the Republican effort in the Senate, and the George W. Bush plan. That is how the Republicans say they are going to provide for our seniors, through HMOs that are saying themselves that they do not want any part of this business. It is a scandal.

Mr. ALLEN. The point is a very good one. I was at an assisted living facility just 2 weeks ago and one of the women there said, you know, I am spending $700 a month for my prescription medication, and, she said, I hope you do something soon. It is very clear, she could not continue spending $700 a month very long. Yet, under the Bush proposal, it is 4 years, you wait 4 years, if you are taking in more than $14,500 a year, and you wait, and then after 4 years you call up your HMO and hope that maybe they are offering a plan that today they say they will not offer under any circumstances. There is another issue here that we have not talked about, that I find is very important in Maine, and I will bet it is true in Arkansas and Florida, and New Jersey as well. When I talk to small businessmen and women in Maine, they say to me now, we cannot afford the kind of health insurance that we used to buy. And what are they buying, if they are buying anything at all? They are buying catastrophic coverage only. They are basically getting health insurance, and they will wind up paying for the first $5,000 of their health care. That is not health insurance as we know it. Under that system, there is no incentive, financial incentive, to do preventive care. That is basically the individual, small businessman and woman, carrying the burden of their own health care, and getting insured only for expenses over $5,000. I just was noticing that this is an area where Al Gore's plan really makes a difference, because he creates a 25 percent tax credit for small businesses who are purchasing health insurance for workers, number one; number two, he allows those who are 55 to 65 years old to buy into Medicare; and, three, he provides access to coverage for all children by expanding the children's health insurance program to 250 percent of poverty and allowing a buy-in to the CHIP program for families with incomes above that level. So, by focusing on small businesses, by focusing on children and by focusing on those people between 55 and 65, you are attempting to get to the place where we can expand coverage. It will happen, if it happens, because Democrats are willing to stand up and fight the HMO industry and fight the prescription drug industry, because these industries cannot do it, and in some cases will not do it.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, Republicans in Washington, D.C., are always talking about what small business wants and it always comes down to what Washington Republicans want. But when I talk to small business men and women in Maine, the two most important issues to them are the education and training of their workforce and the cost of their health care. The strong economy has meant that it is harder to find and keep qualified employees. But remember, the Republicans in this Congress tried and failed to eliminate the Federal Department of Education and the assistance that goes to local school boards. It is Democrats who are fighting for school construction and modernization, which will improve education, hold down property taxes, and give our businesses, large and small, a better trained workforce. On health care, too many small business men and women in Maine can now only afford to buy catastrophic health insurance with an annual $5,000 deductible. They are seeing 10 percent to 40 percent increases in their premiums. They will not get help from the Republicans in Congress because the majority here will not even support providing a guaranteed Medicare prescription drug benefit for our seniors. For small business, Democrats stand for continued economic growth, support for education and health care, and fiscally responsible tax cuts.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and the conference report. I commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Chairman Spence) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), ranking member, for their hard work in putting together this legislation. This conference report contains a prescription drug benefit for seniors on Medicare, but only those seniors on Medicare that are military retirees. Like the Democratic Medicare prescription drug plan, on which the majority refused to allow a vote, this bipartisan prescription drug benefit is guaranteed and administered by a Federal agency. Unlike the Republican prescription drug plan, this bipartisan drug benefit does not throw military retirees to the whims of the private insurance companies that say they will not offer such insurance anyway. Like my bill, H.R. 664, the Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, this bipartisan drug benefit gives seniors who are military retirees access to the best prices negotiated by the Federal Government: the Federal supply schedule price, the VA price, or an even lower price. Now, some in this body call H.R. 664 a price control bill. It is not since it does not set prices. It allows the government to negotiate lower prices on drugs. But if one believes H.R. 664 involves price controls, then surely this Department of Defense drug benefit involves price controls. Both bills use the same mechanism. When this bill with the prescription drug benefit passed the House in May, 353 Members voted for it, including 208 Republicans. I ask those Members the following questions: If Congress can provide a government- run prescription drug benefit to one segment of the Medicare eligible population, military retirees, why cannot it offer the same kind of benefit to the rest of our Nation's seniors? If Congress offers some seniors on Medicare discount drug prices negotiated by the Federal Government, why cannot it offer the rest of our seniors on Medicare the same discount prices? The answer is we can. The reason we do not is the undue hold the pharmaceutical industry has over the majority of this Congress. Military retirees need and deserve this bill's prescription drug benefit. I support it with enthusiasm. The tragedy is that Republicans will not do the same for all other seniors on Medicare.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. For the last 2 years, Democrats have been fighting to provide America's seniors with a universal, affordable, and guaranteed prescription drug benefit under Medicare. Republicans have fought tooth and nail to resist these attempts. Now, 1\1/2\ months before the election, Republicans have agreed to let pharmacies buy drugs from Canada for sale to U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, what started as a bipartisan compromise has been scrapped. This legislation allows drug manufacturers to discriminate in pricing against U.S. importers. It allows manufacturers to deny U.S. importers access to FDA approved labels. It allows purchasers to force Canadian wholesalers to sell products at the inflated American price. Reimportation is rendered nearly impossible by this bill. It is not surprising that a drug industry lobbyist was quoted this morning in The New York Times saying, ``I doubt anyone will realize a penny of savings from this legislation.'' This legislation will not help our seniors. The American people will see through this empty Republican promise.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have to say I am pleased we are doing this special order, because watching the debate last night, there was a striking and clear difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush on these environmental issues. In fact, just to turn for a moment back to the energy issues that the gentleman and the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) were discussing, if you pay attention to what has been in the news over the last several months, we had the news that the North Pole was open water, a dramatic development. The ice cap there had melted temporarily during the summer. The North Pole was no longer ice, it was water. We have also in the last few days seen news that the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic is now as big as it has ever been. Yet when it comes to deciding how to deal with this energy crisis, the first thing out of Governor Bush's mouth is we need to do more drilling, which means we need to have more oil, burn more oil. Though we do, as Al Gore pointed out last night, we should bring more marginal wells into production. That is a short-term solution. There is also no reason not to proceed to make sure that we are doing energy conservation, that we are doing renewable technologies. We are looking at solar and other technologies like that, and are really moving ahead on that front. Mr. Speaker, the basic point is this: What makes good sense for an energy policy is what makes good sense for an anti-pollution policy. As the gentleman mentioned, and I want to thank him for his leadership on these issues, I do have legislation, H.R. 2980, the Clean Power Plant Act of 1999, that would bring all of these old grandfathered plants, grandfathered under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Air Act amendments, it would bring them up to new source emission standards. Well, what does all that mean? It turns out that these old coal- and oil-fired power plants are still major polluters in this country, and they produce nitrogen oxides, which contribute to ozone depletion and produce smog; they produce sulfur dioxide, which is a component of acid rain; they produce mercury, which poisons our waters and gets into the food chain in our lakes and streams and has led to warnings in 40 States across the country that pregnant women and children should not be eating fresh water fish; and it produces the major greenhouse gas, which is carbon dioxide. In fact, 33 to 40 percent of all the man-made carbon dioxide emissions in this country come from these old coal- and oil-fired power plants. What we need to do is, and the technology is there, this is relatively easy stuff if you have the political will to do it, what we need to do is make sure that we are taking steps toward bringing all these power plants and other industrial plants, which I will speak about in a moment, up to new source emissions standards. Let us use the latest technology. Let us have cleaner air and let us burn less fuel. If you turn to Texas, the record there for Governor Bush is a very different record. In fact, the Texas Air Crisis Campaign has just put out a press release indicating that in the 1999 session of the Texas legislature, an effort to mandate reductions from grandfathered industrial plants in Texas was headed off when the Governor's office asked industry representatives to draft a voluntary plan in which these grandfathered facilities could come up with voluntary cleanup plans. But now the data shows that in the past year the actual reduction in pollution is three-tenths of one percent of the total emissions from the plant. There is a dispute with a Texas natural resources conservation commission. They say it is all the way up to 3 percent, but they are taking into account future reductions. The bottom line is this: the record that Governor Bush has in Texas on controlling pollution is appalling. It is appalling. And the data is here for anyone who wants to look at that record. If it is any indication of what he would do in Texas is what he would do for this country, we all have reason to be worried when it comes to the environment.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Madam Speaker, after fighting tooth and nail against Democratic efforts to provide seniors with prescription drug coverage, the Republican leadership now appears willing to make a small concession. They will agree to let pharmacies buy drugs from Canada for sale to U.S. citizens. This is the bipartisan crumb that may be given to seniors by the 106th Congress. The Republican leadership believes that if they govern as Republicans for 22 months, they can win elections by talking like Democrats for the last 2. Governor Bush barely mentioned the words ``prescription drugs'' during the primary season. Now he says he has a plan, but it will not help middle-income seniors with huge drug bills. He says that Medicare is a government HMO. It is not. It is reliable. Medicare does not pick up and leave a State if it is not making money. It is cost effective. Medicare has 3 percent administrative costs instead of 30 percent for the private insurance companies. It is fair. Medicare covers all seniors, not just a few. A Medicare prescription drug benefit with negotiated lower prices for all seniors, that is the Democratic promise.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. I would say to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), he has been a cosponsor from the beginning. We have worked very hard on the Democratic side of the aisle to try to develop proposals that would be meaningful to all seniors. Al Gore has the same kind of approach, that we need a Medicare prescription drug benefit that is voluntary, so no one is forced into it, but is universal; it will basically provide coverage for everyone who wants it. I thought what I would like to do tonight is talk a little bit about some of the arguments that are out there. I was reading an article several months ago, an article written several months ago before I came over, and it was an article by a commentator who was saying that if you think there is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats on prescription drugs, you are not paying attention. This election matters a great deal, because these two approaches are so very different from each other. We had our colleague the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) down here a little bit earlier this evening, and he was reminding us that we found this Republican pollster's suggestion several months ago recommending that the Republicans come up with a plan. It did not really matter what kind of plan it was, as long as they could say they had a plan, and that would be enough to get them through the election. But that is the fundamental difference. The fundamental difference here is that Democrats are saying we need to have a plan that is voluntary, that is universal, and that has a guaranteed prescription drug benefit. In addition, we are saying we have got to do something about price. We have to create some leverage, some downward pressure on price. We are not talking about setting prices, we are talking about bargaining power, using Medicare, using health and human services to get lower prices for seniors who right now pay the highest prices in the world. On the other side, the Republicans are trying to do everything they can not to strengthen Medicare; to make sure that if we have any sort of prescription drug legislation at all, the one thing it will not do is strengthen Medicare. What is the reason for that? Medicare is a government health care plan. It covers everyone over 65, and many of our disabled citizens. But the fear on the Republican side is that they know people like Medicare, trust Medicare, want Medicare to be stronger; better, to be sure, but they like it and trust it, and they are afraid that somehow if the program is even better, that will be a problem for those who are trying to diminish Medicare's influence in this health care system. So I want to talk a little bit about the language that is out there. One thing the Republican pollster recommended is that they should attack Democratic plans as being ``one-size-fits-all'' plans. You hear that phrase on the other side of the aisle all the time now, ``one- size-fits-all.'' So the proposal that they make is they say are designed to provide choice. Mr. Speaker, when Governor Bush made his proposal for so-called Medicare reform, the word ``choice'' appeared in his statement many, many times. The word ``HMO'' never appeared in his statement. But the choice that he was talking about was going to come from letting HMOs come into Medicare, and the government would provide some subsidy to HMOs in order for them to, perhaps if they wanted and if it were profitable enough, provide some kind of private insurance for seniors. That is not a plan that will work for seniors, and it is disguised. It is all wrapped up in language of choice, when it is really all about letting insurance companies and HMOs have a much bigger role in Medicare as it stands today. You can see ads out there run by the folks on the other side of the aisle that talk about a big government HMO; the Al Gore plan, the Democratic plan, is a big government HMO. Well, guess what? There is no such animal. HMOs are private insurance companies. Most of the biggest ones are for-profit private insurance companies. There are some that are nonprofits, but, as we know, the for-profits tend to be gaining the most ground and gobbling up some of the smaller ones. But that kind of deception is really what we have got to deal with. We have got to be explaining to people all the time that there is no such animal as a big government HMO, there is just Medicare, and you can trust it, you can rely on it, it is there for you, it does not change from year to year to year. Whereas when you turn to managed care plans under Medicare, and we have some, we have about somewhere between 14 and 15 percent of seniors now covered by some kind of managed care, and just now two of them are my parents, my parents back in Maine are two of about 1,700 people on a Medicare managed-care plan in the State of Maine. Out of all our several hundred thousand seniors, we have 1,700 seniors on a Medicare managed-care plan. And, guess what? As of December 31, the private company that provides that insurance is leaving the State of Maine. We will have no Medicare managed care in Maine. Guess what the reason is? Basically it is just not profitable. If you want to rely for prescription drug benefits on companies who will come and go in your State, in your community, depending on whether or not they can make a profit, that is no assurance at all. That is not security at all. It is not equitable at all. But that is what you get with these Republican plans, which are essentially subsidies to the insurance companies to do what can be more cheaply done, more equitably done, more fairly done, through our health care plan for the elderly called Medicare. That is the real division between the parties on this subject. What we are also seeing now on the other side of the aisle is a whole series of efforts. We passed the plan over here that was a straight-out subsidy to the insurance companies that passed by three whole votes. It is obviously not going anywhere, because it does not have broad bipartisan support. Then we hear about other plans. ``Maybe we could do a program to give money to the States only for the poorest people who are not covered now.'' The trouble is that over half of all the people who do not have prescription drug coverage have incomes above 175 percent of the poverty line. Middle-class seniors are struggling with prescription drug bills that can be $200, $300, $400, $600, $800 a month. I have talked to them in my district. I have talked to people who have coverage now through a private plan, and they are in their sixties. I was talking to one couple in Waterville, Maine, and between the husband and the wife, both of them have insurance now, but they lose it when they turn 65. They are 63 or so. Their cost for prescription drugs alone will be somewhere around $800 to $1,000 a month, and they do not know how they are going to do it. The problem gets worse year after year, because the one thing we know about next year is next year spending on prescription drugs is going to be 15 percent at least higher than it is this year, just as this year it is 15 percent higher than it was last year. What we can see here is fundamental. The most profitable industry in this country charges the highest prices in the world to the people who can least afford it, many of whom are our seniors. Seniors are 12 percent of the population, but they buy one-third of all prescription drugs. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) knows from talking to people in his district, as I know talking to people in Maine, they can barely get by, and often they do not. Often they simply do not get by. So what troubles me most about this is all of the misinformation that is out there, all of the TV ads that are being run by Republican candidates, talking about a ``big government HMO'' or ``one-size-fits- all'' plan, which is basically designed to deceive, because the truth is that Medicare is a plan which covers everyone. But it is also true that we can design and we have designed a Medicare prescription drug benefit, which is voluntary, you do not have to sign up for it, but which will be a real strong start on making sure that seniors get the prescription drugs that they need. I just want to say how much I appreciate the good work that the gentleman is doing to bring us down here, night after night after night, to try to clear the air, to try to contain the rhetoric and to try to convey to the American people some sense of the fundamental differences between plans, like the Republican plans that rely on insurance companies, and plans like ours that cover everyone, that are fair and equitable and cost effective and work through Medicare. I guess the last thing I would say is this: It is not just the ads that are out there being run by the Republican nominee for President or others. The pharmaceutical industry is out there running more television ads perhaps, the latest projection suggestions, more television ads, more money, than any industry has ever run in any election until now. Citizens for Better Medicare, which is sort of the front group for the pharmaceutical industry, they are not citizens and they are not for better Medicare, the pharmaceutical industry is running ads trying to defeat the discount for seniors contained in my bill, the Medicare prescription care benefit contained in the Democratic proposal, or even our bills led by the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) or the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), those bills that are designed to try to allow drugs to be imported into the United States and then sold by pharmacies here, because medicines can be purchased so much more cheaply in Canada, Mexico, in fact anywhere else in the world, than in these United States. Let us always remember that these are drugs manufactured by American companies, and they sell for 60 percent more here than they do in Canada, in Europe and everywhere, just on average. And we have got to change this. We have simply got to keep persisting that we are not going to allow the American people to be fooled, and we are not going to accept this rhetoric about one-size-fits all or ``big government HMOs'' or people who say that we are going to give a choice of plans when all they are really talking about is giving an HMO that can pull that choice any time it wants to, any plan it wants to. So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to say thank you to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), who is doing a great job pounding away on this issue night after night. And I am convinced that if we cannot get it this month, we will get a Medicare prescription drug benefit for our seniors in the next 2 years. This issue is too big, it is too important, and we simply cannot let it slide away. We cannot let this whole area be taken over by private insurance companies, HMOs, and the pharmaceutical industry. I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey, and thank him for hosting this special order.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the importance of generic drugs and competition in the pharmaceutical market. This year, as in the past, brand drug manufacturers are asking Congress to support legislation that will extend patents on their most profitable medicines. The most profitable industry in the world is asking Congress for permission to continue gouging consumers, especially seniors and the uninsured. The most notable bills now before us are S. 1172 and H.R. 1598, commonly known as the ``Claritin'' bills. Claritin's manufacturer, Schering-Plough is pushing these bills to protect its popular allergy drug, Claritin, and six drugs commonly used by seniors from less costly generic competitors. Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Pharmacy estimate high consumer costs if the Claritin bills pass. Americans may be forced to pay an additional $11 billion for this medicine over the life of the patent extension because more affordable alternatives will be barred from the market. That is an enormous burden to place on consumers, seniors and taxpayers, especially at a time when health costs are escalating. Fortunately, the Claritin bills are stalled. Unfortunately we expect Schering-Plough and other brand companies to continue to push patent extension bills in years to come, because patents are scheduled to expire on tens of billions of dollars worth of drugs. For the sake of 15 million seniors who lack adequate prescription drug coverage, we must stop all patent extensions whether they are offered directly, or are couched in supposedly consumer friendly language. Consumer and senior groups throughout the nation oppose these bills. We must too.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago, in October of 1998, I released in my district the first study comparing the prices of prescription drugs in the United States to prices in Mexico and Canada. In that study we found that Mainers pay 72 percent more than Canadians and 102 percent more than Mexicans for the same drugs from the same U.S. manufacturers in the same quantities. For 2 years, the Democrats here have been fighting for a prescription drug benefit, fighting for a discount for seniors. But today I rise to ask for support for legislation that would allow pharmacists to buy prescription drugs in other countries and bring them and sell them here. That would mean a substantial discount for our seniors. We need to reduce prescription drug prices for seniors in this country. Seniors cannot wait until the next Congress to get relief from price gouging by the pharmaceutical industry. I urge my Republican colleagues to act now.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) for all his good work on this issue and will begin by saying he is absolutely right, people know that the amount they are spending on prescription drugs is going up and up, that drugs themselves are getting more expensive. As people get older, they use more and more prescription drugs. My colleague was talking a little earlier about how many people use prescription drugs. Well, for seniors it is 85 percent. Eighty-five percent of all seniors take at least one prescription drug; and many, as we know, take more than one. My parents have their rows of pill bottles. And certainly the industry has done a great deal to extend people's lives and to improve the quality of people's lives. But the fact is that these medicines do no good for people who cannot afford to take them and there are millions and millions of Americans, at least 13 million seniors alone, who simply have no coverage at all for their prescription drugs. It has got to be tough to be a Republican these days because watching Governor Bush try to thread the needle, as the House Republicans did before, we see the same kind of exercise. On the one hand, they want to sound like Democrats, they want to sound as if they are reforming Medicare, they are providing a Medicare prescription drug benefit. But because they do not really want to strengthen a government program, which is what, of course, Medicare is, they have to figure out some other way to do it. It is so different from the private sector because people who are employed and have their insurance through Aetna or Cigna or United or a Blue Cross plan may very well, and probably do in many cases, have prescription drug coverage provided by the health care carrier. But the Republicans are completely adverse to having Medicare provide a prescription drug benefit just as those private sector plans do; and so they go through all sorts of contortions to argue against the simplest, most cost-effective, fairest system possible, which is a Medicare prescription drug benefit. I want to comment a little bit on the Bush plan because it is so much like what our friend on the Republican side threw up in this House some time ago. The interesting thing about this plan, among many interesting things, is, first of all, he says we are going to provide a subsidy of 25 percent for people over the lowest income level, we are going to provide a subsidy of 25 percent of the premium. And so the logical question to ask is, Well, how much is the premium? Because then we will know how much the subsidy is. And the answer is, Well, there is no information on that because the premium will be offered and chosen and decided by a set of private insurance companies. And so then the question is, Well, how much will the deductible be? And there is no answer to that because the deductible will be decided by HMOs and other insurance companies. Then there is the question of the copay and how much will the copay be. Same thing. There is no answer to any of those questions. There are no details. And the reason is they cannot abide the thought of strengthening Medicare, they cannot abide the thought of really modernizing Medicare. When the Republicans talk about modernizing Medicare, watch out. Because they are not modernizing it. They are basically saying, we are going to reform it by transforming it; we are going to turn Medicare over to HMOs and insurance companies and you will all be better off. Now, of course, it is true that when you look at the experience of HMOs in Medicare now, they are leaving the program. Seniors are being dropped all across this country. And the coverage is very uneven. For about somewhere between 14 and 15 percent of seniors in this country, they get prescription drug coverage through a managed care plan. But the number who get their coverage that way are falling off. In my home State of Maine, as of a month or two ago, there were a grand total of 1,700 seniors who got their prescription drugs through a Medicare managed care plan. As of January 1, there will be none. We will have no Medicare managed care in Maine; therefore, no way for seniors to get prescription drug coverage through a managed care company in my State. There simply will be no way. Governor Bush, in presenting his plan, and the Republicans in the House, in presenting their comparable plan here some time ago, always said, We are going to leave it up to the consumer. It is their choice. Well, it is not their choice if there is no plan to chose from. And whose choice is it really? What they are really talking about when it comes to choice is not the choice of the consumers; it is the choice of the insurance companies. Because they are the ones who will decide the premiums, the copays, the benefit levels. And those benefit levels, those premiums, those copays can change year after year after year. I have talked to a lot of seniors in my district, and what they want and what they need is stability and continuity and predictability and equity. They need to know that what they had for a benefit last year will be there next year and the year after and the year after, and they want to know if there is a copay that it will be about the same year to year to year. And most of all, they want to know that the plan will be there. That is what Medicare provides. Medicare provides a guaranteed benefit that will be there year after year after year. All of my colleagues on the other side who attack Medicare over and over again as a bureaucracy are ignoring the fact that the HMOs and the other insurance companies are bureaucracies in themselves, but they are much more expensive and much more unfair and much more unpredictable than Medicare.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I do not think that anyone says it better than the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry). He is a pharmacist himself. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to the things that people are going through. I wanted to come back for a moment and talk about one part of the Bush plan that was announced yesterday or the day before and that strikes me as completely unrealistic. What he is saying is we are going to provide $48 billion over 4 years in terms of grants to the States in order to provide immediate relief for seniors who need help. There are several points to be made. The first point. The fact is that the people who are suffering the most are not necessarily those with the lowest income. They are the people with the highest prescription drug cost. I was talking to a man up in Waterville not so long ago, Waterville, Maine, who had owned his own garage, his own auto repair business, he and his wife were now retired but they were not quite 65 and they had a little bit of coverage for their prescription drugs that they would lose when they hit 65. His wife's expenses and his together were already running at $1,000 a month. He was terrified as to what would happen to him when he hit 65, he lost his coverage, there is no coverage under Medicare and he knew he would be in great trouble. So there is one problem. People all up and down the senior income ladder have difficulty paying for their prescription drugs. The second problem is this: There are only 16 plans, 16 States in the country which have functioning programs for the low-income elderly. Now, five States have passed legislation to get them to that place and there are a couple of other States trying innovative things, but when you look at the number of people covered by these plans, you are talking about somewhere between, in most cases, with the exception of three States, somewhere between 5,000 and, oh, roughly 50,000 people in the entire State. These programs are not working. They are not available. They would have to be created. Certainly Texas does not have any form of low-income assistance for the elderly, prescription drug insurance. These plans are not able to pick up the slack any time soon and if they did, they would be misguided. The fundamental problem is this: Medicare is a Federal health care plan. Republicans do not like that. They do not like the plan, but Medicare is a Federal health care plan. It works. It is cost efficient. Its administrative costs run about 3 percent a year. When you turn to the private insurance industry after all the administrative costs and the overhead and those executive salaries, you are talking about 30 percent a year. And they are picking and choosing among the people they want to cover. So the fundamental fact is that if we are going to have a cost effective system, it is going to be through Medicare. If we are going to have a fair system that covers everyone, it is going to be through Medicare. If we are going to have a system where people can predict their premiums, their copays, their deductible from year to year to year to year, it is going to be through Medicare. It is simply wrong to take this issue that is just really doing enormous damage to our seniors now, people who cannot afford their prescription drugs and their food and their rent and basically to say to them that we have got to wait until we can transform Medicare by turning it over to HMOs and insurance companies and then if we give them enough money, maybe they will give you prescription drug insurance. It is pathetic.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1651, the Fishermen's Protective Act Amendments. H.R. 1651, as passed by the House, makes improvements in several important fisheries laws by enhancing conservation and management measures. In the other body, this bill was amended to include a ban on the use of spotter planes to find Atlantic bluefin tuna. The Senate passed the amended bill by unanimous consent. Mr. Speaker, I want to make clear how important this provision of the bill is to tuna fishermen in Maine. Most of them have been shut out of the fishery this season, as well as in the recent past. Currently, the larger boats can afford the planes. They take in the allowable catch and force smaller boats to end their season. Without this ban, owners of these smaller boats will be unable to make a living and support their families. Many strong opinions are the rule when fisheries issues are concerned. In this case, however, the Secretary of Commerce received a unanimous recommendation from the Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel in 1998. The panel advised the Secretary to prohibit the use of spotter aircraft in the General and Harpoon categories of the Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery. The use of these planes can increase the catch rates and closures in the general and harpoon categories. The scientific and conservation objectives of the Highly Migratory Species Fisheries Management Plan can be negatively affected by the increased catch rates. Two years ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a proposed rule to adopt the Advisory Panel recommendation but the rule was not finalized. It has, therefore, become necessary to take legislative action. Mr. Speaker, this is a regional issue that many in the New England delegation on both sides of the aisle support. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) for expediting action on this bill, and I urge Members to support this legislation.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. If the gentleman will yield once again. I find talking to people in Maine, where we have had a number of changes, and I hear about this from other colleagues here in the House as well, by and large, there are a lot of mergers going on in the health care insurance industry. Lots of mergers. We are getting now to about five major companies plus the Blue Cross plans, and that is about all there is in terms of companies that really represent more than 4 or 5 million people in this country. But what happens every time there is a change, and this happened with my parents and other people I know, it throws the seniors into a position of trying to figure out what to do next. If they have to change their health care plan, the first question that comes up is, well, will a new health care plan allow me to see the doctor I am seeing now. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is that kind of change, where the benefits change and the premiums change and the way claims are handled changes that just really frustrate and upset so many seniors. Not to mention, not to mention the small business people and the self-employed in this country who are now buying catastrophic coverage only because they cannot afford the cost of health care, of group health insurance, or sometimes individual insurance, which is now vanishing from Maine as well. But what I am really troubled by is costs are going up everywhere. And it is one thing for people who are employed to cope with those changes, but it is another for seniors to try to cope with the constant changes with changes in plans, with being pushed off one insurance plan into another plan, if they can find it, for supplemental coverage, I mean, and it is just too much. It is too much. Medicare works. Its administrative costs are 3 percent. Turn to the private insurance market, and we are talking administrative costs of roughly 30 percent. Medicare is efficient. Now, one of the strengths of Medicare is its stability and predictability and equity, and one of its weaknesses is it has not changed very often, and there are all sorts of problems with it. I do not disagree with that. But it is there. It does not cover only those people in urban areas. It covers every senior in this country who signs up. Basically, it provides the equity. It can be strengthened; it can work. We simply need to make it work before we go home.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding to me, and I thank him for all the good work he has done on this issue. He has been a real leader and has been sort of pounding away. We have learned, have we not, since our time here in the Congress that the status quo is the status quo, and it is very hard to change. It only gets changed if people speak out again and again and again about an injustice until something is done about it. While the gentleman from New Jersey was talking about the State of Nevada, and its failed effort to rely on private insurance companies to provide prescription drug coverage, I was reminded how proud I am of my home State of Maine, which has taken a different tact. Basically what the State of Maine did in the last legislative session through the leadership of Chellie Pingree, a State Senator, Mark Lawrence who is running for the U.S. Senate, and some others, was to adopt a law which provides that the State of Maine will negotiate lower prices for all of those people, seniors and others, who are not now covered with prescription drug insurance of one kind or another. So about 300,000 people in Maine would be covered under this plan. The way the law is written, the State would essentially act as what is calmed as a pharmacy benefit manager. They would negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry to get a reduced price based on the fact that they represent 300,000 people, the kinds of discounts that Aetna and Cigna and United negotiate for their beneficiaries, and the kind of discount that I have suggested we really should do for Medicare beneficiaries here. The bill I have introduced, H.R. 664, the Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, is very simple. It involves the creation of no new bureaucracy. It does not involve any significant expenditure of Federal money, but it would allow pharmacies to buy drugs for Medicare beneficiaries at the best price given to the Federal Government. The best price is usually what the VA pays for drugs or what Medicaid pays for drugs for people who qualify for their programs. It is real simple, a real simple idea. If one is part of a big pool, one ought to get a decent discount. That is all we are suggesting for Medicare beneficiaries. But that is only through that piece of legislation. But that is only part of a solution. The other part of the solution, of course, is to get a real Medicare reform, a benefit under Medicare so that those people for whom a discount is not enough would be able to get assistance in covering their prescription drugs. Basically, the Maine legislation is a path that would get discounted prices for our seniors without a significant cost to the government. I was listening earlier to some of the commentary from folks on the other side of the aisle about tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, how, with this huge new surplus, we really need to, first thing, is to have tax cuts, tax cuts larger than any we have seen certainly in my lifetime here in the Congress. We see them in a variety of different proposals. A year ago, the Republican majority came to us with a suggestion for a tax cut that was $800 billion. Now they have carved it up into pieces, but the total is still $800 billion. What is really tragic about this proposal is, not that there are tax cuts themselves, because there should be tax cuts. We ought to eliminate the marriage penalties. We ought to reduce the estate taxes. We can provide relief in a number of other ways. But we should not take the whole on-budget surplus and spend it all on tax cuts. Why? Because we learn something, we teach our kids something that we hopefully learned ourselves; and that is, when we have responsibilities to others, we need to meet those responsibilities before we give ourselves presence. What I mean by that is this, Medicare is going to be under increasing pressure. Right now, there are 39 million Medicare beneficiaries. But when we get out to about 2030, there will be close to 75 million to 80 million Medicare beneficiaries. At that point, it is obvious Medicare needs to be shored up. It needs more funding. We cannot get there just going along the way we are right now. The real tragedy, the real tragedy, in New Jersey, we see it all across this country, and I am glad that people from Maine pointed it out to me so long ago now, too many seniors just cannot do it. They cannot take their prescription drugs. While folks on the other side of the aisle are talking about an estate tax repeal that would benefit primarily the 1 percent of the wealthiest taxpayers in the country, though I believe we should have estate tax relief, still our priority ought to be let us take care of those people who simply cannot afford to take the medical care that their doctors tell them they have to take. Every day in this country, people are trying to decide, can I afford to buy the food I need today? Can I afford to pay the electric bill? Can I afford to pay the rent? Or can I somehow scrape together enough to take the full dosage of the prescription drugs that I am supposed to? When I talk to people in Maine, many of them are taking one pill out of three. They are cutting pills in half. They are not filling their prescriptions, because they cannot do it. That is not what health care is supposed to be like in this country. It is not supposed to be like that. In this country, one would have thought, the wealthiest country on earth, at the moment in its history when it is most prosperous, we could at least provide prescription drugs for our seniors. The truth is we can. There is no question, with the surpluses that are projected, that we can provide a Medicare prescription drug benefit for our seniors. Absolutely no question. What have we got? We have got the kind of proposal that went through here a few weeks ago on a three-vote margin, not even close to a bipartisan approach, that basically said, what we need to do for our seniors for prescription drugs is turn them over to HMOs and insurance companies; and if we give enough money to the HMOs and insurance companies, maybe, just maybe, we will not require it, but maybe, just maybe, they will provide insurance for our seniors. Now, this might seem logical except that the insurance industry says, no, there is no way we are going to provide insurance for prescription drugs for seniors. No way. That is what Chip Kahn, the head of the Health Insurance Association of America has said. Leaders of the Blue Cross plans have made the same point. Why? Because everybody is a claimant. If one is a senior, the chances are good, 85 percent, that one is on some form of prescription medication. So everybody is a claimant. I say to people in Maine, if Maine were a low-lying State, and every year 85 percent of the people made a claim for flood insurance, one would not be able to buy flood insurance in Maine, not at all, not at any price. Well, the same is true for prescription medication for seniors, and the health insurance industry knows that. Who does not know it in this country? Well, the pharmaceutical industry does not know it because the pharmaceutical industry is out there basically promoting this private insurance scheme. The Republicans from this House do not get it either, because they are basically proposing a plan that the health insurance industry is saying we will never comply with, we will never provide this kind of insurance. I come back to what I said about responsibility. This country at this moment in its history can afford to provide prescription drug coverage for seniors, not to pay for all of the drugs that every senior needs, but a decent health care plan. We can afford it. And what holds us back, what holds us back is the view of the majority that the one thing we cannot tolerate in this country is strengthening Medicare; the one thing we cannot tolerate is strengthening a government health care plan for our seniors. It has to be done through the private sector. Well, look at the private sector. I do not know in how many States this is true, but I know it is true in a lot of places; but as of July 1, 700,000 people in this country who had some form of prescription drug coverage through their HMO simply got dropped by their HMO. Why? Because it was not profitable to cover them. In Maine, there were a grand total of 1,700 people under Medicare managed care, under an Aetna plan. And as of July 1, Aetna announced they are pulling out of the State of Maine. So there will be no coverage under managed care plans in Maine for seniors who need prescription drug coverage. What that means for my State is probably about 50 percent of all the seniors in Maine have absolutely no coverage at all for their prescription drugs. And many of the people that I know are supposed to take $200, $300, $400, $600, $1,000 a month in prescription medications. They cannot begin to do that. What we have in this country now is a rationing system that rations prescription drugs by wealth, by how wealthy we are. What kind of system is that? It is not fair, it is not right, it is completely antithetical to what we should have in terms of health care for our seniors in this country. People can stand up here and talk about the need to eliminate what they call the death tax. I am not talking about relief, because I think we need relief for our small businesses. I think we need relief for family farmers. I think the rate should come down, and I think the exemption should go up. Reform is one thing, but repeal is another. What repeal does is put Bill Gates and Steve Forbes and the mega- billionaires in this country ahead of people who today cannot afford their prescription drugs, cannot afford the medication that keeps them out of the hospital, that extends their lives, that improves their lives. They cannot do it. We are stuck in this Congress. We are stuck because the majority simply cannot abide strengthening Medicare. The majority simply cannot abide having Medicare benefits receive the same kind of discounts and benefits that the people who are lucky enough to have private health insurance through Aetna or Cigna get. And there are lots of complaints about health care in this country. Individuals working for a company that provides a quality health care plan, they get their prescription drugs covered. But seniors, 12 percent of the population, buy a third of all prescription drugs, and somewhere between 40 and 60 percent have either no coverage at all or very inadequate coverage. We need to act. We need to act this year. There is no reason why we cannot. The Democratic plan was a comprehensive plan that would have provided a benefit, would have provided a discount, would have worked, did not rely on insurance companies saying they would not do anything. That plan should have come to this floor and been debated, the way substitutes to Republican legislation normally is, but the Republican majority would not allow a full debate and vote on that particular issue. I think that is the scandal. That is the real scandal. We have a responsibility here to take the most serious problems in this country and deal with them. We ought to be thinking about the country as a whole, what will strengthen this country; what will be the best for our citizens; and deal with our responsibilities: to improve Social Security, to strengthen Medicare, to provide a prescription drug benefit, to invest in education, and, sure, to have some targeted tax cuts and to pay down the debt. Do not squander this moment of prosperity simply on tax cuts, which inevitably are weighted to wealthier people in this country. There is a real choice, a real debate going on in this House right now, and it seems to me that what we are trying to do on the Democratic side is live up to a wide range of responsibilities. We are trying to figure out what is best for all of us, all Americans, all the people in this country together. We are not saying, as the other side is, me, me, me. Give me money. We are saying we. We are saying we have got to hang together. And when we have our parents and grandparents unable to buy, unable to take medication that their doctors tell them they have to take, we ought to do something about it. And we ought to do it this year, now, before we go home. I thank the gentleman very much for all he is doing on this topic. I still hope, I still hope that as we get closer to November that we will have some of our colleagues on the Republican side come forward with a plan, and not a plan that is a showpiece, not a plan that is just there to basically look like something has been done even if it is not understood, but a plan that will mean something to millions of American seniors who today simply cannot take the medication they should, cannot eat well, cannot pay the rent, cannot do all those things that they expected to do in their retirement years. So I thank the gentleman very much.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, this is a simple amendment, and it would require prescription drug companies to disclose the prices they charge here in the United States and in other countries. We know from studies in my district and elsewhere that Mainers, for example, pay 72 percent more than Canadians and 102 percent more than Mexicans for the same drugs and the same quantities from the same manufacturers. We have the most profitable industry in the country charging the highest prices in the world to people who can least afford it. In a free enterprise system, we ought to get some more information about what those prices are.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I understand the point of the point made by the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen), chairman of the committee, and consequently I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.