Democrats lean in on prescription drug reform on campaign trail

Democrats in key swing states are highlighting prescription drug reform as a crucial win as they make their case for keeping power in the run-up to the midterms, and warning that Republicans could reverse their progress.

Candidates across the country are touting lower prescription drug costs, and President Biden has made sure to remind people of these wins from his perch in the White House.

“This year, the American people won, and Big Pharma lost,” Biden said in a speech from the Rose Garden last month, pointing to the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats, which had measures allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and placed caps on certain medications.

“I wish I could say the Republicans supported this progress and reducing health care costs and strengthening Medicare. That would be good for all of America, but [they] had a very different idea,” he added.

Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona — all crucial battleground states — have been pushing similar messaging in recent weeks.

Leslie Dach, chairman of the Democrat-aligned health advocacy group Protect Our Care, told The Hill that Democratic candidates have been effective in communicating prescription drug reform, and he thinks it is making a difference among voters.

“Poll after poll has shown that reducing the costs of health care are the most popular parts of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Dach said.

“If people can’t afford their health insurance or can’t afford their drugs, it’s a source of great anxiety around every kitchen table. And that’s particularly true now, when people are squeezed by other prices for daily goods,” he said.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is locked in a tight reelection fight with Republican candidate Herschel Walker, spearheaded a bill to cap the monthly cost of insulin at $35 earlier this year.

Although Senate Democrats were unable to save Warnock’s proposal, the senator still celebrated the partial win in the Inflation Reduction Act’s provision capping monthly insulin costs for seniors covered by Medicare.

“Big pharmaceutical companies have been price gouging insulin. I’m glad we were able to cap that cost for seniors on Medicare,” Warnock tweeted earlier this month.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), running for reelection against Trump-backed Blake Masters, has focused on lowering health care costs in the months before the election, sitting down for interviews and discussions to go over his work regarding the issue.

“More than anything else, specifically from seniors, I hear about the costs of their prescription medication. The people have to make hard choices that, you know, in our country today nobody should really have to make,” Kelly told AARP Arizona State Director Dana Kennedy in August.

Kelly said provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act to lower prescription drug prices would make a difference.

“Medicare has massive buying power and now it can use this massive buying power to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical manufactures to get the best deal, not the worst deal. That’s behind us,” he said.

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has also contrasted Democratic action on lowering prescription drug prices with Republican resistance to the proposals.

“House Republicans have promised to repeal, as I said, the lower prescription drug costs, raising costs for seniors in order to hand billions of dollars of profits to their friends, Big Pharma,” Pelosi said in a press briefing on Sept. 30.

“This is an election, as we come up on it now — not to talk politics but civics — this is an election about contrast,” she said. “Nationwide abortion ban, respecting freedom of choice for families, again, a kitchen table issue like prescription drugs, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, the Republicans wanting to reverse that.”

Candidates seeking their first term in Congress have also built off the recent Democratic wins on drug prices.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, running against celebrity physician Mehmet Oz (R), has made health care equity one of the core issues in his campaign.

While lauding the measures passed earlier this year, Fetterman has also called for further action, including allowing for the importation of lower-price drugs, as well as the limiting of drug costs overall.

He told the Erie Times-News earlier this month that he supported “taking on the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to ensure affordable prescription drugs, expanding Medicare to include hearing, vision and dental, and lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60.”

Dach, from Protect Our Care, said Republican resistance to additional drug price reforms — those passed this year were limited to Medicare, excluding millions of younger patients — was a liability among voters.

“It’s incredibly important for people. Young people get sick,” he said. “When you look at some of the things that the Republicans refused to do — for example, allow for having a reduced price of insulin no matter where you get insurance — I think those things matter to people.”

While campaigning on legislative health care victories has been a winning formula for Democrats in past midterm elections, recent polling data suggests that the messaging on the drug pricing reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act had not been reaching many voters. 

A poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 36 percent of Americans knew that the law allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices and even fewer were aware of the price caps placed on insulin and annual healthcare costs. 

Republicans largely have remained distant from health care this election cycle, even appearing to back off the long-held GOP goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act. 

Speaking to NBC News, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said ObamaCare was “probably here to stay.”

Dach is dubious that conservatives are truly ready to shift gears on health care.

“I don’t believe that they’ve changed their stripes on their opposition to making important changes in health care,” said Dach, noting that some Republicans have been open about wanting to end Obamacare and overturn the Inflation Reduction Act.

“They know they can’t speak the truth to the voter,” he said.