WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) joined Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ruben Gallego (D-NM) to push for continued progress on lowering the cost of prescription drugs.
Senator Alsobrooks Pushes To Lower The Cost Of Prescription Drugs
Watch the remarks here.
Highlights include Alsobrooks talking about what she heard from Marylanders on the campaign trail:
“Like Senator Gallego, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of years on a campaign trail talking to Marylanders who shared with me their concerns about economic opportunity, the ones who said that they simply wanted their government to provide for them an opportunity to live the American dream, to be able to afford the basic necessities — housing, medication, prescriptions — to be able to afford education for their children. And so I’m here on their behalf today.”
Alsobrooks sharing the story of her father, who is a caregiver to her mother and was recently diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia that required a prescription for Eliquis:
“I’m also here to speak on behalf of what I will call the 48 million. There are 48 million family caregivers in the United States of America. It just happens that my father is one of the 48 million, caring for his wife for 55 years, my mother, who is suffering from various health conditions. And it is my father that in the midst of caring for my mother, spent a really, really distressing couple of months at the kitchen table last year, and that was as a result of his own diagnosis of a heart arrhythmia that required a prescription of Eliquis. It wasn’t until that diagnosis that I learned that Eliquis was $800. You can only imagine the distress my father experienced when he sat on the phone literally for months trying to talk to the insurance company to do what he could to afford a medication that I think we can all agree is unaffordable for the average American. And so I thank all of my colleagues who have worked over the last few years to make sure that the Inflation Reduction Act covered medications like Eliquis that you heard David say now is reduced by 56%. This is life changing. This is absolutely life changing for the average American.”
Alsobrooks ended on her commitment to fight for every single Maryland family to be able to afford the lifesaving medications they need:
“I will continue to fight, along with my colleagues, and I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to also center in everything we do the lives of those who depend on us, who don’t care, to be honest with you, one way or the other, whether we are from a red or blue state, who don’t care, whether we are Democrat or Republican. When someone you love is sick, you want them to have the lifesaving medications that they need, be it for your grandchild or your spouse, it is most important.”