CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday highlighted prescription drug savings for seniors as he looked to cement his legacy with the race to replace him just two weeks away. Biden also jabbed Republican nominee for President Donald Trump and his policy proposals: “He has no concept of anything. No plan."
Joining the event in New Hampshire's capital was Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the last candidate Biden beat to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. They appeared together at Concord Community College to trumpet a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that almost 1.5 million Medicare enrollees saved nearly $1 billion on prescription drugs during the first half of the year.
Much of those savings came as a result of a cap on out-of-pocket drug costs created by the sweeping climate and health care law that the Biden administration helped carry through Congress in 2022. It put an annual maximum of $3,500 that recipients of Medicare, the government's health insurance coverage plans for seniors, pay for their prescriptions while making recommended vaccines for older Americans, like immunization for shingles, free.
Biden said seniors aren't the only ones benefitting from the savings.
“It's also saving taxpayers billions of dollars,” he said.
Next year, the drug cost cap for Medicare recipients falls to $2,000 per year, which will save some of the sickest Americans more. But the change has come at a price for others – it’s contributed to rising drug plan premiums that the government has tried to keep down by paying insurers billions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund. Still, some insurers have raised plan prices significantly – or pulled plans from markets.
Asked aboard Air Force One on the way to New Hampshire about tapping into the Medicare trust fund to cover the extra costs, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she didn't have specifics. But she added, "Because of the work this administration has done" seniors were "seeing the results of that.”
The legislation is expected to deliver major savings in other ways, though, for taxpayers and Medicare enrollees in the long term.
For the first time ever, the federal government will negotiate the price of 10 of Medicare’s costliest drugs. The negotiated list prices, announced in August, will take effect in 2026. Taxpayers spend more than $50 billion yearly on the 10 drugs, which include popular blood thinners Xarelto and Eliquis and diabetes drugs Jardiance and Januvia.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare drug pricing negotiations will save taxpayers $3.7 billion in the first year.
Biden and Sanders were also scheduled to visit a local campaign office to promote Democratic candidates in the state, where the governorship is up for election in November. They were focused on state candidates, rather than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who is squaring off with former Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election.
Sanders ran for president in 2016 and 2020. Biden was his party's presumed candidate for reelection until he turned in a dismal performance in a June debate against Trump and ended his bid under pressure from fellow Democrats.
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.
