President Joe Biden Trumpet is being blown medical insurance Biden has gained new authority to negotiate directly with drugmakers over prescription drug costs, but a poll suggests any direct political boost he gets from enacting the popular policy may be limited.
Three-quarters of Americans (76%) favor allowing federal health care programs for seniors Negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs. That includes a strong majority of Democrats (86%) and Republicans (66%), according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About one-fifth of Americans are neutral on the issue, while 6% are completely opposed.
But polls show Biden’s approval ratingIt was 40%, about the level last year. Americans are divided over how the Democratic president handles prescription drug prices — 48% approve, a relative strength for him, but 50% disapprove.
Seven-in-ten Democrats approve of the way Biden is handling prescription drug prices, compared with about a third of independents and about a quarter of Republicans. Even so, Republicans are still more likely to approve of the way Biden is handling prescription drug prices than to approve of his job effort overall (8%).
Even among Americans who support allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, approval of Biden’s handling of the issue remains relatively tepid. A slim majority (55%) was in favor, but 43% were against.
Interviews with poll respondents show that Americans, from conservative to liberal voters, want the federal government to be more proactive in negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs. The gap between those who support new health insurance policy, a long-sought goal of successive presidents and lawmakers, and those who approve of Biden’s handling of the issue also shows that the administration is still trying to reconcile the White House’s achievements with Biden’s personal popularity Get in touch. He is preparing to run for re-election.
The challenge is even more critical because a centerpiece of Biden’s re-election pitch to voters will be to sell his legislative accomplishments and show that he is a leader who has achieved for Americans what other presidents have failed to do, such as empowering Medicare negotiations authority and the enactment of a massive, bipartisan bill, the Infrastructure Act.
Esperanza Baeza, a teaching assistant in Chicago, said the medication she was recently prescribed was prohibitively expensive and she had to compare to find one that was relatively affordable. She said that while she knows the president can’t solve every problem, she wonders if Biden is doing enough on drug pricing.
When told about Medicare’s new power to negotiate with drug companies, Baeza, a Democrat, responded: “That’s awesome.”
“I’m 55 years old. I know very quickly that I’m going to retire,” she said. “I want to get more educated on this and I hope I don’t have to struggle with this when I retire.”
The new price talks come from a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, a set of Democratic priorities signed into law last year that focuses on climate and health care policy. The White House last month formally unveiled the first 10 drugs that Medicare will negotiate, including the blood thinner Eliquis and the diabetes treatment Jardiance.
“Big Pharma has been blocking this for years,” Biden said at an event in the East Room to mark the announcement. “They keep prescription drug prices high to increase profits. They extend patents on existing drugs to suppress fair competition, rather than innovate and play pricing games so they can charge whatever they want.
“But — finally, finally, finally, we got enough votes to beat Big Pharma by one point,” he continued. “Well, we did it.”
Ellen Daily, a 73-year-old retiree in Carrollton, Texas, said she strongly favors allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. She and her husband are both enrolled in federal health plans. But Daley said she disapproved of Biden’s overall job performance and said the president’s role in unleashing health insurance power wasn’t enough to change her view of him.
“They only negotiated 10 drugs,” said Daley, who said she is a political independent with fiscally conservative views. “It should be comprehensive; every drug that Medicare pays should be negotiated.”
The lower prices for the 10 drugs will take three years to take effect, and the industry’s lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, has sued the government to stop the program. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will add 15 more drugs to the negotiating list in 2027, 15 more in 2028, and up to 20 drugs each year thereafter.
Annie Lok, 45, who lives in Queens, New York, also said she disapproves of how Biden is handling prescription drugs because he needs to do more to lower the cost of more drugs across the board.
“In my opinion, they should price or negotiate prices for almost all prescription drugs. If that’s not practical, then there will be more than 10,” Lok said. She said she is a registered Democrat but does not consider herself a member of the party because her views are left-wing.
Locke, who works in the healthcare industry, added: “I believe healthcare should be available to all people, so obviously prescription drugs are part of that. It’s a basic need and for me, knowing there are people who can’t afford to pay to stay alive It’s unacceptable.”
Biden himself has expressed some messaging challenges when it comes to his signature law. At the event, he said the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed Congress without Republican support, was “in a sense, misnamed.”
“We did lower inflation, but there’s a lot more in this legislation,” he said. On the health care side, the law caps the amount Medicare beneficiaries must pay out-of-pocket for drugs at $20,000 per year starting in 2025, and a provision that limits the out-of-pocket cost of insulin to $35 per month. has been introduced. In force.
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The poll was conducted Sept. 7-11, 2023, among a sample of 1,146 adults drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
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