WASHINGTON– Rarely a day goes by without President Joe Biden mentioning insulin prices.
He promotes a $35 price cap on drugs for Americans with Medicare – in White House speeches, campaign stops and even at non-health care events across the country. His reelection team flooded the airwaves in swing states with ads mentioning him, in English and Spanish.
All this would seem to have a considerable political and economic impact. The reality is more complicated.
As his campaign tries to emphasize what it sees as an advantage over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, Biden often overestimates what people eligible for the price cap have already paid for insulin. It’s also unclear whether the number of Americans helped will be enough to influence the November elections, even in the most contested states, which could come down to a few thousand votes.
“It’s much more of a political signal in a campaign than demonstrating to people that they benefit from the insulin cap,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, a nonprofit organization that studies health problems. “It’s a way to make it real that you’re the candidate for health care.”
Many of those who benefit from the price cap were already receiving discounted insulin, were already Biden supporters, or both. Meanwhile, others who need discounted insulin can’t get it because they don’t have Medicare or private health insurance.
Biden’s campaign is highlighting the president’s successful efforts to lower insulin prices and comparing them to those of Trump, who first ran for president on a promise to lower drug prices, but took limited action during his term.
“It’s a powerful, tangible contrast,” Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said. “And it’s an issue we’re campaigning on early, aggressively and within our coalition.”
About 8.4 million people in the United States control their blood sugar levels with insulin, and more than a million have type 1 diabetes and could die without regular access to the substance. The White House says nearly 4 million seniors can benefit from the new reduced price.
The price cap for Medicare beneficiaries was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which originally aimed to cap insulin at $35 for all health insurance beneficiaries. When it was passed in 2022, it was scaled back by congressional Republicans to apply only to seniors.
The Biden administration also announced agreements with drugmakers Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to cap the co-payment for insulin at $35 for people with private insurance. They represent more than 90% of the US insulin market.
But Biden constantly repeats that many people were paying as much as $400 a month, which is an exaggeration. A Department of Health and Human Services study released in December 2022 found that people with diabetes enrolled in Medicare or with private insurance paid an average of $452 per year, not monthly.
The high prices mentioned by the president mainly affect people without health insurance. But the uninsured rate has fallen to record lows because of the health care law signed by the Obama administration and aggressive efforts by the Biden White House to ensure that eligible people sign up on do more frequently.
So, in reality, one of the administration’s policy initiatives undermines the economic argument of another.
But this effort has not reached everyone.
Yanet Martinez who lives in Phoenix and supports Biden. She doesn’t work and doesn’t have health insurance, but gets insulin for about $16 a month through deep discounts at her local clinic.
The lower prices only apply if her husband, a landscaper, does not earn enough to exceed the monthly income limit. If he does, his insulin could reach more than $500, she said.
“I’ve heard people talking about the price of insulin going down. I haven’t seen it,” said Martinez, 42. “It should be uniform. There are a lot of people who have no way of affording it and that makes it very difficult. »
Sen. Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, is sponsoring bipartisan legislation to make the $35 insulin cap universal, even for people without health insurance. In the meantime, he said, what was accomplished when Medicare beneficiaries and drugmakers agreed to lower their prices was “literally saving lives and saving money to people.”
“It’s good policy because it centers the people rather than the politics,” Warnock said. He said that during his trip to Georgia, a swing state in November, people told him “thank you for doing this for me or someone I know.” family.”
That includes people like Tommy Marshall, a 56-year-old financial services consultant in Atlanta who has health insurance. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 45 and injects himself with fast-acting insulin several times a day. He paid about $250 for four to eight weeks of medication last November, but saw the price drop by half in February, after Novo Nordisk agreed to reduce its prices.
“If I were his political consultant, I would tell (Biden) to talk about it constantly,” said Marshall, a longtime Democrat and longtime public advocate for lowering insulin prices, including for the group Defense Protect Our Care Georgia.
Marshall said price caps “have significant emotional resonance” and could influence a close election, but also admitted: “You’re talking about 18 to 65 year olds. I imagine there are probably two or three other issues ahead of this one.
“Maybe someone is kind of defensive,” he added, “maybe that could influence them.”
Geoff Garin, a pollster for Biden’s re-election campaign, said the insulin cap was one of the president’s best-performing issues. He said the data was “clear, consistent and overwhelming”.
Rich Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, which supported Biden, called the insulin cap an important issue for the president among older voters.
“For people who are persuadable – and there are still some, believe it or not – the cost of drugs is a very important factor,” said Fiesta, whose group has 4.4 million members and advocates for health and economic security of older people.
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions. But Theo Merkel, a senior researcher at the conservative Paragon Health Institute, countered that lowering the price of insulin is an example of “policies being written to fit the talking points, not the other way around.”
Merkel, who was Trump’s White House adviser on health policy, said manufacturers that have long made insulin prefer to cap the amount policyholders pay because it gives them more leverage to obtain benefits. higher prices from insurance companies.
President’s health care approval ratings are among the highest on a range of issues, but only 42% of American adults approve of Biden’s handling of health care while 55% disapprove, poll finds February from the Associated Press and the NORC Center. for public affairs research.
KFF found in its own December poll that 59% of American adults trust the Democratic Party to do a better job on health care affordability, compared to 39% of Republicans, although only 26% of those surveyed in the same survey said they knew. on capping insulin prices.
“In policy terms, Democrats and Biden have an advantage on health care,” Altman said. “They insist.”
ABC News
