This is the first time a competitive Senate campaign has used a long-form video to explain how Washington corruption affects voters’ everyday lives.
Atlanta, Ga. — Today, Jon Ossoff for Senate released a new campaign video exposing how pharmaceutical companies use political influence and campaign contributions to members of Congress to keep prescription drug prices high.
“Every election cycle, drug companies spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans to shape policy and protect their profits,” said Senator Jon Ossoff to camera.
Sen. Ossoff uses the four minute video to explain how entrenched systems of lobbying and political spending distort policymaking in Washington, and argues that those systems can be broken when members of Congress have the political will to confront them directly.
In Washington, Sen. Ossoff has stood up to the pharmaceutical industry that has been price gouging seniors for decades. Last week during the Senate’s budget debate, Sen. Ossoff offered an amendment to prevent insurance companies from denying or delaying needed care, but Senate Republicans blocked Sen. Ossoff’s amendment. In 2022, he helped pass legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies on the price of certain high-cost prescription drugs, caps annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 for more than 100,000 Georgia seniors, and limits insulin costs to $35 per month.
Sen. Ossoff has repeatedly confronted corruption and the influence of powerful special interests in Congress. And in recent months, he has drawn national attention for directly calling out corruption and chaos in the Trump administration and its consequences for Georgia families.
“The Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights, but corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump. Because how does American politics really work? It’s coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money. Both sides, both sides. Citizens United was the worst court decision in modern American history. It’s why members of Congress don’t listen to the people; they listen to their donors. And this corruption is why insurance companies get away with denying your claim for a procedure you needed to save your life,” said Sen. Ossoff at a rally in Augusta in April.
Transcript:
We’re told a story. Work hard. Play by the rules and you’ll thrive. No matter who you are or where you start, the grind will pay off.
But for too many, this story just isn’t true. Groceries. Rent. Insurance. Taxes. The car note. The power bill. The math doesn’t work.
No matter how hard you hustle, you can’t get ahead. The culture wars are exploited to divide us while insurance companies get away with denying our claims. While hedge funds buy up all the houses in our neighborhoods, while we have to pay $3,000 for an ambulance.
You aren’t the problem. Neither are your fellow Americans.
The problem is a corrupt and failing political system. The problem is that the people’s elected representatives don’t represent the people. They represent the donors and special interests.
Corruption is why things don’t work for ordinary people.
To fix it, we have to understand it. Corruption’s impact isn’t abstract. It shows up in our daily lives.
Take prescription drugs. The cost of medicine in America is astronomical compared to other wealthy countries.
About 1 in 3 American adults skip the medication their doctor prescribes because they can’t afford it. Drug companies charge hundreds of times what it costs to produce them.
But, how have they gotten away with it? Every election cycle, drug companies spend millions on campaign contributions to Republicans and Democrats to shape policy and protect their profits. And members of Congress fall in line.
It’s corruption in plain sight.
But nowhere was Pharma’s grip on Congress clearer than in 2003, when the industry corrupted legislation that was meant to make medications affordable. See Congress was creating Medicare Part D, a program meant to help seniors afford prescriptions. But drug companies moved quickly to protect their profits.
The industry mobilized an army of lobbyists to secure a key provision in the bill that prevented the federal government from using Medicare’s bargaining power to negotiate lower prices. Other wealthy countries, they negotiate to get a better deal for their citizens. Our Congress banned that, and the result was predictable.
American seniors ended up paying more than patients almost anywhere else. But the congressman who led the charge to protect Big Pharma, Billy Tauzin, he left Congress right after the bill passed to run one of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest lobbying powerhouses, earning more than $2 million a year.
This is how the system has worked for a long time. But it doesn’t have to. And it doesn’t always.
In 2022, I helped pass a bill that finally started to break pharma’s grip on Congress.
That doesn’t mean the problem is solved, but it’s proof the system can be changed when there’s the will to do it. This fight isn’t just about politics. It isn’t just about one man or one party.
It’s about power. Who has it and who our system serves. If we can break the grip of corruption, our politics can meet the people’s needs instead of serving the wealthy and powerful.
That’s a fight we have to win.
