Joe Biden To Call For Expanding New Initiatives To Lower Drug Costs
HuffPost
Biden will use the State of the Union to highlight the popular, but somewhat under-the-radar changes he and Democrats have already made.
President Joe Biden thinks his administration’s actions to reduce the price of prescription drugs represent some of his biggest achievements in office.
He is about to call for doing even more.
During Thursday night’s State of the Union address, Biden will propose strengthening the federal government’s ability to negotiate down the prices of drugs in Medicare, according to senior White House officials. He will also call for extending a $2,000 limit on out-of-pocket drug expenses, the officials said, so that it applies to all Americans with insurance and not just those in Medicare.
Both of these changes would represent expansions of federal action on health care that became law just two years ago, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping climate and health care bill that Democrats passed on party-line votes.
Several provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act sought to reduce the price of prescription drugs, especially for senior citizens. The best-known and most heavily debated of these gave the federal government power to negotiate prices of certain drugs directly with manufacturers.