Biden, Sanders to highlight savings from Medicare price caps

President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will travel to New Hampshire on Tuesday to speak on health care savings achieved through the Biden administration’s policies such as the estimated savings that resulted from the Medicare price caps enacted by the Inflation Reduction Act.

According to a senior administration official, Biden and Sanders will go to Concord, N.H. to discuss the details of a new HHS report that shows almost 1.5 million Medicare beneficiaries saved roughly $1 billion thanks to the price caps on prescription drugs during the first half of 2024.

Biden and Sanders have partnered in recent months to speak out against high drug costs. In July, they both penned an op-ed critical of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly for the high cost of their weight loss products Wegovy and Zepbound respectively.

“For many years there has been a lot of talk about the outrageous prices the American people are forced to pay for prescription drugs, but no action. The good news is that President Biden and Vice President Harris with the help of Democrats in Congress have acted to take on the unprecedented greed of the prescription drug industry,” Sanders said in a statement.

“Thanks to these efforts, no senior is paying over $35 a month for insulin.  Beginning next year, no senior in America will be paying over $2,000 a year for prescription drugs.  And, for the first time in history, Medicare is negotiating to lower the prices of some of the most expensive prescription drugs in America,” he added.

A $35 monthly cap on insulin costs for Medicare beneficiaries went into effect at the start of 2023. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have spoken in favor of expanding this cap to include everyone.

“Starting next year, with a new $2,000 cap, we’re expected to save 19 million seniors, and others on Medicare, an additional $7.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs. That’s real change, delivered,” White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said in a statement.

“While Republicans continue to try to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and thereby raise prescription drug costs for all seniors, the President and Vice President will never stop fighting to ensure that that no senior has to choose between life-saving prescriptions, or any other essentials, ever again,” said Tanden.