I don’t think there’s any argument that President Joe Biden deserves all the credit for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, [1] which caps the cost of Insulin at $35 for all Medicare recipients. Except for Donald Trump who is raging that Biden didn’t do this — he did. Yeah, no. He did not.
Trump loves to play the “Oh poor me game” and his go-to place to do that is his Truth Social platform, of course. Which is where he was on Saturday, busily venting about Biden and taking full credit for lowering the price of insulin, Mediaite [2] reports:
Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it. It was all done long before he so sadly entered office. All he does is try to take credit for things done by others, in this case, ME!
I don’t know if Trump is delusional here, or he just thinks we’re all stupid, but the plain fact is the measure is a budget reconciliation bill [3] that was sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). It was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, long after Trump left office.
Fox News anchor John Roberts spread Trump’s silly notion by crediting him with Biden’s accomplishment because the former president signed an executive action that according to Mediaite, “created a voluntary savings model that affected relatively small numbers of Medicare recipients.”
According to Roberts, however, “President Biden made it his signature issue to convert the voluntary program into a mandatory program.” Once again, no matter how Trump and his cronies spin it, that’s a big, fat NOPE. As Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Hill, [4] Trump “failed” to cap insulin costs.
“This is how you know Donald Trump has a vulnerability. Trump promised to cap insulin costs. He failed. President Biden took on big pharma, worked across the aisle, and capped insulin prices for millions of Americans,” Moussa wrote.
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, instead of paying $400 a month for insulin, seniors on Medicare will only pay $35 a month.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 3, 2023 [5]
It would have been lovely if Trump had managed to do this, but caring for other people, especially those who happen to be poor and sick, is just not in his worldview. He would rather paint himself as the victim to gain sympathy and as the election looms, you can bet he’ll do more of this.
The Biden campaign has taken an entirely different tack, making lowering the costs of prescription drugs a focal point of the Inflation Reduction Act and a keystone part of his reelection message. Biden has, understandably, touted the passage of this measure as one of his major achievements.
In its messaging, the Biden campaign seeks to draw a sharp contrast with Trump.
“Donald Trump was too weak to take on Big Pharma and lower prescription drug prices for seniors as president — but Joe Biden got it done. As a result, millions are seeing lower prices on the lifesaving medications they rely on,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster said in an earlier statement to The Hill last December.
I hope the Biden campaign continues to hit Trump where it hurts. He deserves it. He did almost nothing during the COVID pandemic until it had been raging for months and by the time Trump left office [6] more than 400,000 Americans lost their lives. As this Newsweek [7] story points out, the Biden administration has had its share of difficulties with the pandemic, it has always been eminently clear that the president proactively fought the pandemic, as compared to Trump who promoted weird and dangerous remedies like bleach and hydroxychloroquine.
That said, as someone who deals with diabetes on a daily basis, I’m grateful to Biden for lowering the costs of insulin for those who need it.