The President and Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, announced today in a statement a ‘historic’ drop in the price of ten medicines for the elderly, just a few months before the US elections.
This agreement, the result of unprecedented negotiations between the federal health insurance system for the elderly and the laboratories, will enable savings of 1.5 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros) for beneficiaries and six billion dollars (5.4 billion euros) for taxpayers in the first year, according to the White House.
The newly negotiated prices will have an impact on the price of medicines used by millions of older Americans to help control diabetes, blood cancer and prevent heart failure or blood clots.
According to the Associated Press, this is a historic agreement for the Medicare programme, which provides health coverage to more than 67 million elderly and disabled people.
For decades, the federal government has been prohibited from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies on the price of their drugs, despite this being a routine process for private insurers.
‘This meant that pharmaceutical companies could basically charge whatever they wanted for the life-saving treatments that people depend on, and all Americans paid the price,’ White House adviser Neera Tanden told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday night.
The price of medicines in the United States, higher than in other developed countries, has historically escaped any regulation or public control.
It’s a victory that Joe Biden could have taken sole credit for, since it stems from one of his flagship laws, called the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, a large-scale investment plan related to the energy transition and purchasing power.
The drug business will also be a key point of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in the race against Republican Donald Trump for the White House.
The US vice-president will join Joe Biden today to announce drug prices, in their first joint appearance since Harris replaced the Democratic front-runner to run in November’s elections, as both struggle to convince voters that costs will tend to fall after years of above-normal inflation.
The official event takes place a day before the Democratic candidate unveils part of her economic agenda in North Carolina, in which she aims to help reduce costs and increase middle-class incomes.
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