VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The U.S. needs to “finish the job” and make insulin more affordable for everyone who needs it, President Biden said here Tuesday.
“We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare,” said Biden, who spoke at the Kempsville Recreation Center. “When I introduced it, it was for all Americans — we’ve got over 200,000 kids with type 1 diabetes that aren’t covered. But here’s the deal — some of my friends cut out everything but the Medicare piece. Guess what? We’ve got to get it covered for everybody. We’ve got to finish the job.”
Doing so won’t hurt drug companies, Biden said. “Look at the profit margins of these companies — they’re hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s not like they’re getting hurt. Let’s cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every single American who needs it. We’re the only country that doesn’t do that.”
The president criticized some Republicans who he said want to undo some of the healthcare coverage gains his administration has made. “Some threaten to default on the national debt unless I accept certain economic plans,” he said, noting that he’s planning to lay out his budget by March 9. He invited Republicans to “lay their proposal on the table and we can sit down and we can agree and disagree; we can fight it out.”
Biden said his budget would “invest in America, lower health costs, and protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, while cutting the deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years.”
Some Republicans, on the other hand, appear to “want to cut taxes for the very wealthy again, and they want to cut taxes for large corporations, and want to take back the power we just gave Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate, which would raise prices,” he said. “And they would have a huge giveaway to Big Pharma and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. If they say they want to cut the deficit, but their plans actually would explode the deficit, how are they going to make the numbers add up? What are they going to cut? That’s the big question.”
“For millions of Americans, healthcare hangs in the balance,” he continued. “Will they continue to fight to cut the Affordable Care Act [ACA] and make health insurance more expensive for millions of Americans?”
Biden noted that Republicans have voted to change or repeal the ACA more than 50 times in 4 years. “Let’s be clear about the consequences. To get rid of the Affordable Care Act would mean that more than 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions would lose the critical protections they have now.”
If the ACA were repealed, millions of people would also lose free preventive care such as cancer screenings, and “the only reason people with pre-existing conditions who [didn’t previously] have private insurance are able to pay for it is because they have the Affordable Care Act,” the president said. “Millions would lose basic services like maternity care, which insurers would no longer have to cover, and up to 3 million young adults will lose access to their parents’ health insurance.”
Furthermore, “nearly 40 million Americans would be in danger of losing their health coverage completely,” including millions who get their coverage through Medicaid, he added. “If they did manage to keep their health insurance, it would cost thousands of dollars more per year than it does now. That’s just a glimpse of the damage of repealing the Affordable Care Act.”
Some House Republicans are being advised by Russell Vought, a former Trump budget director, whose plan is to slash over $2 trillion from Medicaid. “He wants to end Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, and then [enact] additional deep cuts that could lead to nearly 70 million people losing critical services,” Biden said. “Most of them are seniors, people with disabilities, and children. Some could lose their health insurance altogether.”
He pointed out that many rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid to cover their uncompensated care costs might end up closing their doors if Vought’s plan was enacted. “Already more than 500 rural hospitals across the country are at risk of closing.”
In addition, “at a time when so many of our kids are dealing with painful mental health challenges, millions could lose access to mental health care as well. At a time when so many of our loved ones and neighbors are struggling with the opioid epidemic, millions could lose access to drug treatment facilities. It would be devastating,” he noted.
“Make no mistake,” said Biden. “If [these] Republicans try to take away people’s healthcare by cutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, I will stop them.”
The healthcare changes the administration has made are making a big difference in people’s lives, and “we’ve got more work to do. But we’ve made a lot of progress … Families across the country are starting to breathe just a little easier; we’ve just got to keep going,” he added.
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