Headline Roundup • August 20th, 2024
Will Harris' Plan to Cap Prescription Drug Costs Work?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Vice President Kamala Harris recently released a set of economic proposals, including a plan to cap prescription drug prices.
Key Details: According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), drug price cuts of between 38% and 79% would come into effect in 2026. The proposal builds upon policies passed in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Key Quotes: “This plan builds on Vice President Harris’ leadership in removing medical debt from nearly all Americans’ credit reports and in helping secure American Rescue Plan funds to cancel $7 billion of medical debt for up to 3 million Americans,” the Harris campaign wrote. A heathcare policy adviser at the conservative Heritage Foundation said the moves have "increased premiums already, and it’s expected to increase premiums more, even substantially more, as early as this fall.”
For Context: The Biden administration recently negotiated a deal between Medicare and drug companies to cut the cost of 10 drugs for Medicare users. Meanwhile, rising healthcare costs remain important for voters. According to a May Pew Research poll, about 65% of Democrats and about 48% of Republicans feel that affordable health is a "very big problem."
How the Media Covered it: Washington Examiner (Lean Right bias) highlighted analysts who believe capping drug costs would lead to an increase in health insurance premiums. A guest essay on the New York Times opinion page (Left bias) from Dr. Aaron Carroll, president of AcademyHealth, argues that the negotiations between Medicare and drug companies are significant but that a more comprehensive plan is needed to address high drug costs.
Featured Coverage of this Story
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Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Friday a slate of economic proposals that she would prioritize during her first 100 days in office, if she were to win the presidential election.
The proposals included a number of healthcare policies aiming to lower prescription drug costs and alleviate medical debt, according to a factsheet shared by her campaign.
Some of the proposals build upon policies passed by the Biden-Harris Administration in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 — including a cap on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs and Medicare drug...
Bjarte Rettedal/Getty Images
Last week, the White House announced a milestone in health care policy. After decades of effort, and for the first time, the government successfully negotiated drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. For years, the fight to control health care prices, perhaps the most significant factor in health care spending, has felt like an unwinnable battle, so it’s no small feat that Medicare is finally flexing its negotiating muscles. But it’s also a drop in the bucket.
In a country where an estimated 18 million people are unable to afford the medications they need, reducing drug costs...
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign plan to cap the costs of prescription drugs has some healthcare analysts warning that it would cause an increase in health insurance premiums, with the only debate being how much.
Last week, Harris released a series of economic proposals aimed at lowering prices for food, housing, and healthcare in an attempt to distance herself from the economic legacy of President Joe Biden.
Among those proposals is a plan to set caps on the amount paid for households for drugs. The policy would expand provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats...
