On Monday, President Joe Biden urged Congress to pass the ‘Build Back Better’ bill, especially the provisions in the bill to lower the prices of prescription drugs, including insulin, according to MedPage Today.
In a speech from the East Room of the White House, the president said, “We’re going to end the days when drug companies could increase the prices with no oversight and no accountability.”
“Going forward, drug companies that increase the prices faster than inflation are going to face a steep excise tax,” he added. “We’re saying to drug companies, ‘When your prices to the American people go up, you’re going to be accountable.’”
Biden began his remarks by acknowledging the “groundbreaking, life-saving” work many drug companies are doing.
He said, “Look no further than vaccines and the treatments they’re manufacturing and delivering that are helping fight this pandemic. Our miraculous therapies have, in some cases, turned diseases that were once considered death sentences into treatable conditions.”
However, “we can make a distinction between developing those breakthroughs and jacking up prices on a range of medicines which have been on the market for years without making a substantive change in the medication itself,” he continued.
“Here in America, it will not surprise you to know that we pay the highest prescription drug prices of any developed nation in the world,” Biden said. “We pay about two to three times what other countries pay for the same drug.”
Citing an anti-cancer drug price, which costs $14,000 in the U.S. costs and only $6,000 in France, Biden said that today, “one in four Americans who take prescription drugs have struggled to afford them.”
He specifically emphasized the high-priced insulin, which is one of the egregious examples of the current problem, the president said.
One insulin bottle costs less than $10 to produce, but “for certain types of insulin, prices have increased by 15% or more each year for the past decade,” Biden mentioned. “Depending on the nature of someone’s type 1 diabetes, the average sticker price for a month’s supply of insulin is about $375 — but for some people, it can be as high as $1,000 a month because they need to take more.”
So, to address all of these issues, the Build Back Better bill would reduce patient cost-sharing for insulin at $35 per month. The bill has been passed by the House but not by the Senate.
Biden said, “Whether you get health insurance through private policy, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, or through Medicaid, nobody is going to pay more than $35 each month for insulin.”
The Build Back Better bill also would help low-income people to register with health insurance on the ACA. In addition, the bill would add a Medicaid-like program in states that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA, benefiting both types of insurance. To know more about what the president has to say, read the article titled “Biden Urges Action on Build Back Better Bill, Especially Drug Pricing Provisions” published Monday on MedPage Today.
