okay. welcome back. this week president trump announced his nominee for replace former health and human services secretary tom price. alex azar was the deputy secretary of hhs under president george w. bush, and more recently, he served as president of lilly usa, the largest division of eli lilly. certainly he has the resume to do the job, but for a guy with such strong ties to the prescription drug industry, should he be the point man to the president will call upon to lower drug prices? i happen to think that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the least transparent, most complex, and most expensive part of our very expensive health care system. when you look at all those single payer systems around the
that what you just talked about with the costs. senator collins said her focus would be on cost control. there it is. she identified competition among providers in regulation of the prescription drug industry as good places to start. she should also advance work on payment reform to preventative care. collins is in a secure position with three years left on her current term and the high regard of maine voters and has made her presence known u so can she then maybe shift the debate to these issues of cost and, finally, get something done whether it s lamar alexander or patty murray s legislation or something republicans can get on board with? it s going to go one of two ways, eric. either cut her out of the equation and try to work with who they have. today the president was golfing with rand paul. another holdout on reform. if they can cut a deal. they may not need her. if they want to ink her, they have a slim majority.
program from the prescription drug industry. when the prescription drug program was passed as part of medicare back in 2005, they got a very special deal. so there are ways to generate additional revenues to help improve the medicare solvency issue without slashing benefits to medicare beneficiaries. it sounds to me like this was something discussed by all of you during the biden talks. during the biden talks, a number of proposals were put forward and you just got a flavor of the kind of things that we talked about. again, when it comes to prescription drugs, we simply said that the medicare program should be given the same rights as the veterans administration, which gets a very good price for drugs for veterans. why shouldn t we be able to do that for the medicare program? why shouldn t we go back to the same payment rates for pharmaceuticals that were in place for medicaid and now medicaid and medicare
the medicare cuts, we ll stand up and sell these tax increases. well first we have to get agreement among ourselves. we made it very clear that we ve rejected the house republican proposal on medicare which ends the medicare guarantee, privatizes medicare. but some cuts in medicare are on the table. here s what we ve said. we ve pointed out that with respect to the prescription drug industry, for example, you can get a better deal for medicare by giving the government the authority to negotiate, just like the veterans administration. that was something that didn t get into the health care reform legislation, but something but that s something we have pushed. the other thing that wasn t part of the house health care bill was to say with respect to rebates, these are the monies that the prescription drug industry gives back to the medicare program, we should go back to the same reimbursement rates that were in effect in 2005. the industry got a windfall at that time so there
administration. so there are lots of things we can do. but what we should not do is the ryan plan, which forces as you know seniors into the private insurance market and gives them, you know, whether you call it a voucher, premium of support, the reality is they are going to face skyrocketing costs or dramatically lower benefits because private insurance companies are going to ration their care. congressman, i m going to ask you what s going on in the talks with the biden talks but i know you ve been sworn to secrecy. but is there any kind of medicare cut that you could support in those bipartisan negotiations with the vice president? we made it clear we will not support any cuts to medicare beneficiaries. we are more than willing to look at the kind of proposal that i just mentioned, where we say that prescription drug companies that are selling drugs to medicare beneficiaries should have to pay you know, provide the government with greater rebates. for example, the prescription