October 17, 2012 Mr. Bill Bloomfield, Jr.

909 N Aviation Blvd, #9 Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Dear Mr. Bloomfield

I have received your recent campaign mailing accusing me of voting to benefit big pharmaceutical companies. This allegation is simply incredible. No member of Congress has done more to reduce drug prices for consumers and taxpayers than I have. In 1984, I joined with Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to pass the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, also known as the Waxman-Hatch Act. This law gave rise to the generic drug industry. In the last decade alone, this law has saved consumers and taxpayers over $1 trillion in prescription drug expenses. Future savings from generic drugs are projected to climb even higher. In 2011 alone, use of generics saved over one billion dollars every other day, totaling $193 billion for the year. In 1990, I wrote the law that requires drug manufacturers to provide discounts to Medicaid and protects taxpayers from rapidly rising drug costs. This Medicaid drug rebate program saves taxpayers over $20 billion every year. Over the next decade, it will save taxpayers over $200 billion. In 2010, I led the House Energy and Commerce Committee during passage of the landmark Affordable Care Act. The legislation closes the notorious Medicare Part D drug donut hole, in which seniors were forced to pay the full cost of their prescription drugs. Since passage of the law, 5.4 million seniors have saved over $4.1 billion in prescription drug costs as a result of the donut hole closure. This includes over 10,000 seniors in my congressional district. Two-thirds of the cost of closing the donut hole is borne directly by the drug companies, which are required to give seniors in the donut hole a 50% discount on drug costs. This Affordable Care Act also contains numerous other provisions that help save consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars in prescription drug costs. It increased the Medicaid drug rebate, saving taxpayers over $20 billion. And it allowed many health care providers access to the 340B drug discount program, saving them money on prescription drugs to better serve their low-income and uninsured populations. The version of the Affordable Care Act that I reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee -- and that the House passed -- included additional savings from drug manufacturers. The legislation required drug companies to provide rebates for drugs used by low-income seniors, which would have saved Medicare more than $80 billion over ten years. It also gave the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to negotiate with drug companies for even lower prices, an authority that the Republican-controlled Congress had denied the Secretary in enacting the Medicare Part D prescription drug program in 2003. Unfortunately, these provisions did not pass the Senate.

My oversight work has identified billions of dollars in wasteful spending on prescription drugs. In 2000, I showed that drug manufacturers were using abusive repackaging schemes to evade Medicaid drug rebates. At my request, the HHS Inspector General ended these practices, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2008, I released a report that revealed that restoring the Medicaid drug rebate for drugs used by dual-eligible seniors, which Republicans in Congress eliminated in 2003, would save taxpayers billions of dollars every year. In addition, I have written laws like the Orphan Drug Act that help ensure that those suffering from rare diseases will have access to effective medications. Your mailing criticizes me for voting against allowing consumers to import prescription drugs from foreign countries. This is ironic since no member of Congress has done more than I have to expose the differences between the high prices drug companies charge seniors in the United States and the often significantly lower prices they charge consumers in other countries. Beginning in 1998, my staff prepared over 100 reports for members of Congress documenting this unfair price discrimination. I also drafted and introduced with former Rep. Tom Allen the Prescription Drug Fairness for Seniors Act, legislation that would protect seniors from discriminatory pricing by requiring drug companies to charge seniors in the United States the same low prices they sell their products for in other countries. This is a much better way to eliminate drug manufacturer price discrimination than the solution you apparently support. Unlike allowing unregulated drug importation, it does not jeopardize drug safety. You do not need to take my word for this. The consumer group Public Citizen, which Ralph Nader founded, gave me an award for remarkable leadership over three decades fighting [for] safe and affordable prescription drugs. Even the conservative magazine American Spectator called me one of the pharmaceutical industrys biggest critics. I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt in this campaign. When you appeared not to know my record as a champion on tobacco control, women's health, and the West LA VA, I wrote to inform you of my considerable efforts on these issues. And when you called me hyper-partisan, I wrote to inform you of my long record of working with Republicans in Congress to enact landmark bipartisan legislation like the Waxman-Hatch Act. But your latest mischaracterization of my record cannot be excused. We had a debate last week at which you erroneously accused me of helping the drug companies by preventing the Secretary of Health and Human Services from negotiating with drug companies to lower drug prices. I pointed out during the debate that you had your facts backwards. It was the Republicans in Congress, whom you have supported with significant financial contributions, who prohibited the Secretary from negotiating for lower drug prices. I led the opposition to this provision and included its repeal in the House-passed version of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. When I directed your attention to a PolitiFact article confirming that I was right, you conceded that you had made a mistake. You know that your accusations are absolutely false, yet you are using them in your advertisements. I had hoped that we would have an honest debate on the issues. Your campaign, however, has devolved into the very type of cynical partisanship and dishonesty that you claim to abhor. Sincerely Congressman Henry A. Waxman