Tuesday night President Biden delivered his annual State of the Union speech and 27.3 million people tuned in to see what President Biden had to say about the state of the United States. At the center of the speech were improvements President Biden wants to make to the healthcare industry.
It is no surprise for those that pay attention to politics that President Biden would talk about insulin when the topic of healthcare came up. In the United States, every 1 in 10 Americans have diabetes, and can cost upwards of a thousand dollars a month to get the life-saving medication.
President Biden taunted the Inflation Reduction Act because that bill passed along party lines in the summer of 2022, it lowered insulin costs for everyone on Medicare down to a maximum of 35 dollars a month. President Biden said he would like to see the job get finished and extended to all Americans whether on group insurance or any government-sponsored health insurance policy. President Biden says that pharmaceutical companies will still be able to make plenty of money because the cost to produce insulin is about 10 dollars and with packaging, it is another 3 dollars.
While discussing the Inflation Reduction Act President Biden also took the opportunity to taunt the success of the bill’s passage of allowing Medicare starting in 2025 to negotiate drug prices. According to the President that will lower the federal deficit by nearly 1.7 trillion dollars.
President Biden is also calling on Congress to pass legislation from the federal level to permanently expand Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans and pass federal legislation to protect Roe after it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.
The President is also taunting the success of cracking down on surprise bills from the healthcare industry saving Americans more than 1 billion dollars last year. At the same time, President Biden says his administration is cracking down on nursing homes for overcharging patients and or taking advantage of them.
President Biden also briefly touched on the mental health crisis that is taking place in the United States asking Congress to give schools more money to schools to hire more mental health workers. He is also making the same request for the VA.
Finally, President Biden touched on a personal note wanting to find a cure for Cancer. President Biden invited a family to the State of the Union because their daughter has cancer and is beating the 5% chance of living because of the great strides that have been made in the past decade with all the research that has been done surrounding Cancer.
