This Piece Of Joe Biden's Legacy Now Hangs In The Balance
HuffPost
Reforms of prescription drug pricing are finally taking full effect, just in time for Donald Trump and the Republicans to wreck them.
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One of President Joe Biden’s big, under-recognized achievements has been an effort to make prescription drugs more affordable. And that effort is continuing into the eleventh hour, even as he prepares to hand over the presidency to Donald Trump.
On Friday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the names of 15 drugs that will be subject to Medicare’s new negotiation power, meaning the federal government will bargain directly with manufacturers to lower the prices of those medications.
It’s the second time that the federal government is engaging in the process, which will take about eleven months to complete. The big headline is that this year’s batch includes Ozempic and Wegovy, the breakthrough, popular — and expensive — weight-loss drugs used to treat diabetes and heart disease. Securing a lower price would save money for both the federal government (which has to finance Medicare) and individual seniors (who have to pay premiums for their drug coverage and then cover co-pays at the pharmacy).
None of this would be happening without Biden, because it was his signature legislative achievement, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, that gave the federal government the negotiation power. And that’s not all it did to make prescription drugs more affordable for the people on Medicare.
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