Kennedy questions Kowalski, Rodgers, Muayad about insulin in Appropriations
Kennedy: Dr. Kowalski … Have you ever heard the expression “yada yada yada”? What does that mean?

Witness: Yada yada means “on and on and on.”

Kennedy: Yeah. We’ve had so much yada yada, thank you, about affordable insulin. Not from people like you, but from us. We’ve been nibbling around the edges for years. Um, Dr. Rogers, thank you for giving so much. Let me ask you a question. Do you have health insurance?

Witness: Fortunately, as a government employee, I do have it, and it’s pretty good, isn’t it? That’s pretty good, Senator. Now, who do you think needs affordable insulin? Who do you think needs capping the price of insulin at 30 bucks or so? Is it the homeless or the uninsured person?

Kennedy: Was that to me, Senator, or to Dr. Kowalski?

Witness: Well, as you asked the question, I think the person who’s less available to afford it would probably benefit more. Yeah, we’ve got 30 million people who are uninsured in this country, and some of them are diabetic too.

Kennedy: Now, Senator Shaheen and Senator Collins have a great bill. Senator Warnock and I have a bill too on insulin. It’s called the Affordable Insulin Now Act. And we’re working closely with Senator Collins and Senator Shaheen. Our bill would cover everybody, whether you have health insurance or you’re uninsured, because a lot of people become uninsured.

Q: have you ever tried to apply, any of you? Oh my God! fine print could hide a dead body
Kennedy: Now, I know our health insurance companies, and God bless them, they’re trying to work with us to lower the cost of insulin, and they have these programs they call them patient assistance programs. So if you’re uninsured and you can’t afford your insulin, they’ll work with you. But have you ever tried to apply for one of those programs if either of you, any of you? Oh my God! First, the application process. The fine print, the apply, it’s so much of it you could hide a dead body in there, nobody’d ever find it. Number two, they send the medicine to your doctor, not to you. So if you’ve got a job or if you don’t have a job, you’ve got to go to the expense of driving all the way to your doctor’s office, probably have to pay your doctor to get the medication. I mean, that’s a special kind of stupid. These programs only cover one or two forms of insulin. And get this, yeah, they’ll give you cheap insulin, maybe free insulin for a month or three months, alright, at best a year. And then after a year, you go in one day, and instead of 30 bucks, it’s $567.23, and you go, “My God,l I gotta go sell blood plasma to be able to afford it.” We need to stop nibbling around the edges. We need to be smart enough to figure this out. And the cost, I think it could be done for 250 million a year. And I’m not talking about taking out a reverse mortgage on Alaska and borrowing more money. I’m talking about finding it in our budget.

Q: count one number a second, how long to count to a billion? Federal budget is $6000B
Kennedy: let me ask you a quick question. You probably don’t know the answer. I had to look it up, but if I started counting to a billion right now, right this moment in 2023, and I counted, y’all listen to this, you may know the answer. I counted one number a second. One, two, three, four, five. And I counted all day and all night, and I counted in the shower, and I counted between bites of a Pop Tart at breakfast. I keep counting and counting. How long do you think it’d take me to count to a billion?

Witness: A very long time.

Kennedy: Right! I told you you were smart. It would take me 30 to years for one billion. I’d be 55. It would be 2055. I wouldn’t make it. Now you know how big the federal budget is. That’s just one billion, folks. The federal budget is six thousand billion dollars every year, and we can’t find 200 and 250 million to cap the price of insulin. Let’s do it right. No more yada yada. [Applause]

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Kennedy: ever heard expression “yada yada yada”? how long to count to a billion? Fed budget $6000B