WASHINGTON – This week, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) participated in a U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on making medicines safer. Witnesses at the hearing included Tom Neely of Birmingham.
Excerpts from Senator Tuberville’s remarks can be found below, or viewed on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Mr. Neely, you mentioned in your testimony the need for federal procurement reform. Do you currently sell [to] the VA or the DOD?”
NEELY: “We do, but it’s a slow process right now. We need to see a lot of growth in that area. It’s a very important channel for our products. It starts, I believe, with the 232 and then it migrated into changes in a few policies of VA and DOD and Medicare, quite frankly, so that we can source the VA and the DOD effectively. At the same time, we maximize the capacity of our operation.”
TUBERVILLE: “Is this a bid process?”
NEELY: “There’s two parts to it. There’s FSS, which is the federal supply schedule, and we’ve seen growth there. Now, we have been unsuccessful on several opportunities. And we have been shut out to date. The last bid we got shut out by a firm that is Chinese-American and that is partnered with [an] Indian-American firm. Now they followed the policy, so I’m not saying that they didn’t. There’s gray area in the policy, but if it could be clearer and give us the opportunity, and level the playing field, we will have won that bid.”
TUBERVILLE: “So you said in your opening statement that you could quadruple your production. What would you need to do that?”
NEELY: “So, we have the facility set up so that all we would need is about $18 million of capital expenditure in equipment. The plant is available for additional packaging lines and granulation processing. So, all we need is $18 million. Now, we have $130 million invested in the plant right now. But it comes down to a business decision and a return on investment. And so, if we could get to that point, we would increase our capacity from 180 million doses a month to over 600 million doses a month. But right now, all we’re doing is selling 100 million doses a month because the distributors all care about just cost. That’s it.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Mr. Coukell—is that how you pronounce that?”
[…]
TUBERVILLE: “Your commitment to domestic manufacturing is a no-China policy. Is that correct?”
COUKELL: “Unless the product is not available anywhere else.”
TUBERVILLE: “Yeah. What changes to the market price do you think are the most important to make U.S. generic drug production financially viable?”
COUKELL: “Thank you, Senator. As I mentioned, there are some injectable drugs that with today’s prices are financially viable now, but there are drugs that are selling at 30 cents, 40 cents, and those aren’t financially viable in the U.S. And so, we need some system where purchasers select for quality, select for domestic manufacturers—and if that costs a little bit more, we probably need to make them whole for that cost.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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