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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The arrival of the new Congress means the retirement1 of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Hatch was elected 42 years ago in 1976, when Gerald Ford3 was president. Presidents have come and gone since then - seven presidents from Carter to Trump4 - but Hatch has always been there.
INSKEEP: In public, Orrin Hatch has always been quotable, often partisan5, yet noted6 for working with key Democrats8.
KING: And behind the scenes, he was deeply influential9 on health care legislation. His bills affected10 millions of consumers and many health care companies.
INSKEEP: Erik Neumann of our member station KUER in Salt Lake City has an evaluation11.
ERIK NEUMANN, BYLINE12: During his 42 years in the Senate, Orrin Hatch sponsored major pieces of health legislation. There was the 1983 Orphan13 Drug Act to promote drug development for rare diseases and, in 1990, the Ryan White CARE Act to treat people with HIV who were uninsured.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ORRIN HATCH: AIDS does not play favorites. It affects rich and poor, adults and children, men and women, rural communities and the inner cities. We know much, but the fear remains14.
NEUMANN: It was a bold stance at the time. It was also an example of how well Hatch, a Republican, worked with Democrats. Hatch co-sponsored a number of bills with Democrat7 Ted2 Kennedy. The two men were sometimes called the odd couple. In 1997, they proposed the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. It was a major achievement, according to Joan Alker, a health policy analyst15 at Georgetown.
JOAN ALKER: This is an area the country has made enormous progress on. And it's something we should all feel proud of, and Senator Hatch should, too.
NEUMANN: At the time, the number of uninsured children in America was around 10 million. Today it's less than half that. Hatch's influence on American health care came from the sheer number of bills he sponsored and because he was chairman of several powerful committees.
DAVID SUNDWALL: History was on his side because the Republicans were in charge.
NEUMANN: That's Dr. David Sundwall, a Utah professor who worked as Hatch's health director in the 1980s. When Reagan became president, the Senate also became Republican for the first time in decades. And Hatch nabbed the chairmanship of the committee that oversees16 the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.
SUNDWALL: He was virtually catapulted into this chairmanship role. This is astonishing, that he had chairmanship of an umbrella committee in his first term in the Senate.
NEUMANN: In 2011, Hatch got a seat on the even more powerful Senate Finance Committee and later became chairman. Now he had oversight17 of Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP. Hatch's growing power did not go unnoticed by health care lobbyists. The watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics ranks Hatch as a top recipient18 in Congress for health industry contributions. And a lot of Hatch's money came from the pharmaceutical19 sector20.
JEREMY GREENE: Clearly he was pharma's man on the Hill.
NEUMANN: That's Dr. Jeremy Greene, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins University. He says Hatch did work on lowering drug prices, but his overall record was mixed. Take a law he sponsored in 1984 with Democrat Henry Waxman. The Hatch-Waxman Act was meant to spur the development of more generic21 drugs.
And generic sales did increase. Still, companies that sold the more expensive brand-name drugs didn't lose out. The act gave them longer patents on their drugs. And Greene says that soon drugmakers figured out how to exploit the law's weaknesses.
GREENE: The makers22 of brand-name drugs began to craft larger and larger webs of multiple patents around their drugs to try and help find ways of preserving monopolies after the initial patent expired.
NEUMANN: Hatch has also gotten mixed reviews for his work with another industry, supplements. That's a catch-all term for vitamins, herbs and other natural health products. The multibillion-dollar industry is concentrated in Hatch's home state of Utah. Loren Israelsen is a former Hatch staffer who now leads a supplements trade group.
LOREN ISRAELSEN: There was really no place for these natural health products.
NEUMANN: As the industry grew, a debate began over how to regulate it. In 1994, Hatch responded by sponsoring the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
ISRAELSEN: It was necessary to have someone who would be a champion to say, all right, if we need to change the law, what does it look like, and let's go.
NEUMANN: The act reined23 in the FDA oversight, saying supplements did not have to go through safety testing like prescription24 drugs. That's led to ongoing25 questions about whether supplements work and how they interact with other medications. Hatch co-sponsored the supplements law with Democrat Tom Harkin.
That bipartisanship was how he worked for decades, but in recent years not so much. He strongly opposed the Affordable27 Care Act. And at one time, he called its supporters the stupidest people he'd ever met. Hatch is now 84. In his farewell speech on the Senate floor, he lamented28 the polarization that's overtaken Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HATCH: Gridlock is the new norm. And like the humidity here, partisanship26 permeates29 everywhere, everything we do.
NEUMANN: And as Orrin Hatch prepares to leave Washington, there's no sign of relief. For NPR News, I'm Erik Neumann.
INSKEEP: This story is part of a reporting partnership30 with local member stations and Kaiser Health News.
1 retirement | |
n.退休,退职 | |
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2 ted | |
vt.翻晒,撒,撒开 | |
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3 Ford | |
n.浅滩,水浅可涉处;v.涉水,涉过 | |
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4 trump | |
n.王牌,法宝;v.打出王牌,吹喇叭 | |
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5 partisan | |
adj.党派性的;游击队的;n.游击队员;党徒 | |
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6 noted | |
adj.著名的,知名的 | |
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7 democrat | |
n.民主主义者,民主人士;民主党党员 | |
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8 democrats | |
n.民主主义者,民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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9 influential | |
adj.有影响的,有权势的 | |
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10 affected | |
adj.不自然的,假装的 | |
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11 evaluation | |
n.估价,评价;赋值 | |
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12 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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13 orphan | |
n.孤儿;adj.无父母的 | |
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14 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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15 analyst | |
n.分析家,化验员;心理分析学家 | |
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16 oversees | |
v.监督,监视( oversee的第三人称单数 ) | |
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17 oversight | |
n.勘漏,失察,疏忽 | |
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18 recipient | |
a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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19 pharmaceutical | |
adj.药学的,药物的;药用的,药剂师的 | |
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20 sector | |
n.部门,部分;防御地段,防区;扇形 | |
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21 generic | |
adj.一般的,普通的,共有的 | |
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22 makers | |
n.制造者,制造商(maker的复数形式) | |
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23 reined | |
勒缰绳使(马)停步( rein的过去式和过去分词 ); 驾驭; 严格控制; 加强管理 | |
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24 prescription | |
n.处方,开药;指示,规定 | |
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25 ongoing | |
adj.进行中的,前进的 | |
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26 Partisanship | |
n. 党派性, 党派偏见 | |
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27 affordable | |
adj.支付得起的,不太昂贵的 | |
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28 lamented | |
adj.被哀悼的,令人遗憾的v.(为…)哀悼,痛哭,悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29 permeates | |
弥漫( permeate的第三人称单数 ); 遍布; 渗入; 渗透 | |
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30 partnership | |
n.合作关系,伙伴关系 | |
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