Biden and Bernie Team Up Again to Take On Big Pharma
Bernie has been a stalwart benefactor to Biden’s success. They teamed up again this week to continue the progress.
13 million families covered under the Affordable Care Act are starting to see health insurance costs decrease by an average of $800 a year, and three million more Americans are now insured.
Most “surprise billing” medical charges from out-of-network insurance providers are now banned under the “No Surprises Act”.
Medicare is negotiating for more affordable pharmaceutical drugs.
Insulin costs are capped at $35 per month for almost four million diabetic seniors on Medicare.
These are just a few consequential healthcare accomplishments in a long and growing list the Biden administration can boast of going into the November election.
One of the reasons President Joe Biden has been so successful is because he hasn’t shied away from many popular policies championed by progressive congressional lawmakers like Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
When Biden secured the Democratic nomination in 2020, he and Sen. Sanders formed a “unity task force” to help write the Democratic party platform.
This week they partnered up again to lower the out-of-pocket cost of inhalers for tens of millions.
President Biden pronounced:
Finally, we beat Big Pharma. I’m proud of my administration taking on Big Pharma in the most significant ways ever, and it wouldn’t have done without Bernie. Bernie was the one who was leading the way for decades.
In January, Sen. Sanders, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, initiated an investigation into asthma inhaler prices.
About his collaboration with the Biden campaign, he explained Wednesday at a press conference with health care advocates and experts, “Working together we can take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and substantially lower the cost of prescription drugs in America. And when we do that, we will be lowering the cost of health care in our country, which is double the cost of any other major nation on Earth.”
https://www.youtube.com/live/C8eDxdX9VmI?si=2oGD5Qvrr5x1nTyS&t=2388
Commenting on three of the top four manufacturers capping their inhalers at $35 a month, Sanders added:
Despite all that we have accomplished up to now. It is not enough. Much, much more needs to be done. I think we should be more aggressive. It’s time to negotiate lower prices for at least 50 drugs a year. The law only required 10 now and then 15 and moves up. These companies, as well as many others in the pharmaceutical industry, are beginning to catch on to the fact that the American people are tired of being ripped off and paying astronomical prices for the prescription drugs they need to stay alive or ease their suffering.
Biden explained:
Bernie, you and I’ve been fighting this for 25 years. Finally, finally, we beat Big Pharma. Bernie helped get it passed. Not one Republican in the entire Congress − this surprised me, I have to admit to you − not one single Republican voted for it. They want to quote − I love their word − ‘terminate’ the Affordable Care Act. I love it: ‘Terminate,’ as my predecessor says, kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance.
Biden and Sanders agree on capping health care costs at $2,000 annually for all Americans, not Medicare recipients.
Biden said:
I’m a capitalist. Capitalism, though, without competition, isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation. That’s what’s going on. Exploitation. When Big Pharma doesn’t play by the rules, competitors can’t offer lower prices for generic drugs and devices and carry that medication so prices are raised artificially. I thank Bernie for leading the charge to do something about this. With Bernie’s help, we’re showing how health care ought to be a right, not a privilege in America. That’s why I’ve never been more optimistic.
Sen. Sanders has become the face of New Deal-esque progressive politics in America since his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs.
Throughout his decades in the US Senate, in which he supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq war in 2003, and his sometimes precarious alliances with republican lawmakers, Joe Biden was not in the same camp as Sanders.
Yet Sanders has praised Biden’s progressive accomplishments while in the White House.
“I think he is a much more progressive president than he was a United States senator,” Sanders said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” last year.
Addressing their disagreements, particularly regarding Biden’s seeming tone-deafness on US relations with Israel, Sanders said:
[There] are a number of areas where the administration’s response has been inadequate or, in the case of Gaza, dead wrong. But while we may have our disagreements with Biden, it’s important to take a minute to think about what a Trump presidency would mean to our country and, in fact, the world.