Vance Waggoner

Lewisburg

To those who contend that Trump did more for Americans than President Biden has, I offer, among other things, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), enacted with bipartisan support. Let’s take a look at just one of its achievements.

While the IRA is best known for its clean-energy investments, it also authorizes Medicare to do something that more than 80 percent of voters say they want: negotiate prices for the drugs senior citizens spend the most on–like insulin.

According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 37 million Americans– about 11% of our population–are living with diabetes. And 8.4 million Americans rely on insulin to survive. In 2018, the average list price of a month’s worth of insulin was $12 in Canada, $11 in Germany, $7 in Australia and $99 in the U.S., according to The Atlantic.

Today, if you’re paying less for insulin, it’s because Joe Biden required Medicare to cap insulin prices at $35 per month. The IRA will also cap Medicare patients’ out-of-pocket costs for all drugs, including those not included on the negotiation list, at $2,000 a year.

If Biden is reelected, he says he’ll expand Medicare’s drug negotiation to 50 drugs a year and extend the out-of-pocket spending caps to all of us.

In contrast, in 2016 Trump promised to “negotiate like crazy” on drug prices; he didn’t. In fact, Trump has said he is going to dismantle the IRA and “totally kill” the Affordable Care Act.

Whose approach–Trump’s or Biden’s–is better for you and your family?

Here’s the amazing part: a September 2023 AP/NORC poll found that, even though more than three-quarters of Americans supported drug-price negotiation, just 48% approved of how Biden was handling the issue of prescription-drug prices. How is that possible?

Is anyone paying attention?