President Joe Biden, center, greets members of the audience after speaking on prescription drug costs during an event at UNLV Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023 | 1 p.m.
If the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act had been in place in 2021 to eliminate the cost of common vaccines for seniors on Medicare, some 24,000 Nevadans would have saved, on average, $70 in preventing painful afflictions like shingles, President Joe Biden said today, the second day of his two-day stop in Las Vegas.
And since the same law capped the out-of-pocket cost of insulin this year at $35 for seniors on Medicare with diabetes, Biden said he has heard directly from diabetics who didn’t think their life-saving medication would ever be so affordable.
“There’s a lot more coming,” Biden told a standing room-only audience in the lobby of the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality at UNLV.
Biden was at UNLV to talk about his commitment to lowering prescription drug costs and making health care more affordable.
“It’s not just your health. It’s about your dignity. It’s about your security,” he said. “That’s why my administration has focused intensely at getting more people affordable health care by lowering prescription drug costs.”
Biden’s additional Medicare and prescription reforms have led to a program requiring drug companies that raise prices faster than the rate of inflation to rebate the difference to Medicare, and, starting next year, an annual $2,000 out-of-pocket maximum will go into effect for all Medicare beneficiaries’ drugs.
Also, Medicare can now negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, which Biden said will save the federal government $160 billion.
“Let’s finish the job. Let’s protect the lower prescription drug costs for everyone. Let’s expand health care for more people to get care,” he said. “Let’s keep building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”
Americans pay two to three times more for prescription drugs than citizens in other developed countries, Ambassador Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said this week in a press call.
And Rep. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, told today's crowd that health care costs are growing at a higher rate in Nevada than the national average: by 7.7% year over year, compared with the national average of 5.7%.
“In a country like ours, people shouldn’t have to split their medicines with their family members or friends,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to skip a dose because they don’t have enough and they want to spread it out longer. They shouldn’t have to choose between medicine and food.”
Biden said that if the $35 insulin cap had been in place in 2020, nearly 11,000 Nevada seniors would have saved an average of $439. He said he wants the cap to eventually apply to all diabetics, including children.
Eli Lilly, one of the world’s largest insulin manufacturers, announced this month that it would cap insulin at $35 a month for all. Novo Nordisk followed that this week with its announcement that it would drop its insulin prices by up to 75%.
David Berman, who has lived in Nevada for 23 years, is a Medicare beneficiary and Type 2 diabetic. Before he introduced Biden to the stage, he pulled two insulin pens from his pocket — one like the kind he uses with each meal, and the other like the kind he injects every night before bed.
With the new price cap, his insulin costs have dropped by half.
“That’s real money in my pocket,” he said.
During his speech, Biden frequently addressed the scrubs- and white coat-clad students and faculty from UNLV’s health sciences programs, including the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, who filled in rows on a staircase under a banner reading “Lowering costs for American families.” He praised medical professionals for their work during the coronavirus pandemic and for the care they gave his family through crises and tragedies, including the 1972 car wreck that killed Biden’s first wife and baby daughter and badly injured his two young sons, and the 2015 cancer death of his by-then grown son Beau. After his speech, Biden spoke with the UNLV students and faculty semi-privately.
Biden’s Las Vegas stop was the last leg of a three-day West Coast fundraising swing that included a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Tuesday.
Earlier reports indicated that Biden would also officially designate Avi Kwa Ame, a 450,000-acre site about 80 miles south of Las Vegas, a U.S. National Monument while in Nevada this week. Avi Kwa Ame, also known as Spirit Mountain, is a sacred center of creation for several area tribes.
The national monument designation has been put on hold, however, and it’s currently unclear when Biden will make the declaration.
