Biden to urge Congress to lower health care costs during New Hampshire visit

Source: The Hill

03/11/24 5:00 AM ET


President Biden will travel Monday to New Hampshire, where he will call on Congress to take three specific actions to lower health care costs for Americans. Biden will seek to draw a contrast between his proposals to reduce health care costs for Americans and GOP proposals to reduce benefits and repeal the Affordable Care Act, a White House official said.

While in Manchester, N.H., Biden will call for Congress to take action on three items he first laid out during his State of the Union address last week. Biden will propose extending Medicare’s $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug costs to people with commercial insurance, a White House official said, and he will ask lawmakers to extend a $35-per-month cost cap for insulin to the commercial market.

There are bipartisan Senate bills that would accomplish that, but they have not been brought to the floor since they were introduced nearly two years ago. Biden will also call on Congress to allow Medicare to negotiate prices for at least 50 drugs per year. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare is in position to eventually be able to negotiate the prices of 20 drugs.

The proposals would represent a major expansion of the Inflation Reduction Act. While the law was sweeping, many of its biggest health provisions only apply to Medicare rather than the commercial market, because Democrats had to scale it back in order to pass it through the Senate.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4522954-biden-to-urge-congress-to-lower-health-care-costs-during-new-hampshire-visit/