VIDEO: Ranking Member Cassidy Delivers Remarks During Committee Hearing on Weight Loss Drugs

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, delivered remarks during today’s Committee hearing to discuss weight loss drugs.

Click here to watch the hearing live. 

See below for the remarks as prepared for delivery.  

Thank you, Chair Sanders. 

Nearly one in three Americans live with obesity, and nearly one in ten have type 2 diabetes.  

There are so many complications associated with this. Obesity leads to more chronic diseases than any other condition. Taking lives and causing almost $173 billion in health care spending a year. We will never fully bring down health care costs without addressing obesity.  

But now we have drugs. GLP-1s, that have the promise to address the complications of obesity and obesity itself. But these drugs are expensive. We can argue about the net price versus the list price. But they are expensive.  

But we can say also, without a profit-motive, without something in return, it’s unclear that these drugs and any other drug would ever be developed.  

We have a tension. It is the tension between the need to incentivize innovation and the ability to afford that innovation. And we are struggling to find that balance.  

Now, if anyone thinks going after Big Pharma is the silver bullet to lowering drug costs, they don’t understand what goes into pricing a drug. There is no silver bullet, but there is silver buckshot. And there are different things you can address, and as you add up each of these things, you ultimately can lower the price of drugs. But we have to preserve the incentive for creativity to address health conditions that have affected Americans and others around the world.  

By the way, I can attest to the power of this. In medical school, removing a portion of someone’s stomach because of ulcer disease was a common surgery. One or two times a week the surgery would happen at the small hospital where I worked. But then along came a drug named Tagamet and within months, the surgery was hardly done at all. That is a drug considered so simple now that it's sold over the counter. Now we have drugs for Alzheimer’s, obesity, cancer that we never thought would be treatable. And there was the profit-motive that incentivized that. 

So as the Committee examines the affordability of GLP-1's, preserving the incentives to pursue innovation should stay top of mind.  

Now, back to the hearing before us. There are serious questions that need to be asked today. What has contributed to the high price of Ozempic and Wegovy? What are American patients actually paying for these drugs at the pharmacy counter? What can be done to ensure Americans have access to these at an affordable price, while maintaining the incentives for innovation that led to their development? 

I appreciate Mr. Jørgensen  for attending this hearing, and hopefully you can provide answers to these questions. 

Important to note, while drug manufacturers play a significant role in determining the costs of drugs, the problem is much greater and more complex than the actions of one company. We need to make a serious effort to navigate the network of perverse incentives throughout our health care system. 

This includes taking a substantive look at health insurance benefit design, price transparency, regulatory barriers, and the perverse effects government discount programs have on prices Americans pay in the commercial market. 

The Committee has a long history of engaging in real bipartisan efforts to lower costs for patients. Last year, Chair Sanders and I worked together on the PBM Reform Act to address misaligned incentives affecting PBMs and lower the price patients pay for their prescriptions. The Committee passed this legislation with overwhelmingly bipartisan support. We need to get our legislation over the finish line and signed into law.   

This is the kind of bipartisan work needed if we are to tackle the high costs patients face for GLP-1s and all drugs. 

Thanks again to our witness for coming today. I look forward to exploring how we can balance both innovation and affordability to lower the cost of these innovative drugs for Americans.  

For all news and updates from HELP Republicans, visit our website or Twitter at @GOPHELP.