Claim: Vice President Kamala Harris asserted that President Joe Biden and her administration have “finally” put a cap on insulin costs for seniors.
Verdict: False. Former President Donald Trump was the first to impose a price cap on insulin for seniors during his administration, and Biden suspended Trump's executive order upon taking office.
Harris' allegations were made during an interview at an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
“We finally capped insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month and prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year,” Harris said.
In May 2020, President Trump announced plans to cap insulin prices at $35 for Medicare members. The rule was set to take effect on January 22, 2021, but the Biden-Harris administration suspended it shortly after taking office.
Breitbart News reported:
Trump has prided himself on his efforts to lower drug prices in the absence of Congressional action, to streamline the Food and Drug Administration's cumbersome drug approval process, and to use executive orders to force the pharmaceutical industry to lower prices. He worked with the industry on Operation Warp Speed to develop a vaccine faster than anyone thought possible, but he clashed publicly multiple times with the industry when the industry supported negative ads against Trump.
Under President Trump, prescription drug prices have fallen in aggregate for the first time in nearly half a century.
In an article titled “Biden Administration Repeals Trump Administration Insulin Pricing Rule,” Policy & Medicine explained, “The Biden Administration has twice delayed the rule before it goes into effect on July 20, 2021, and HHS's first opportunity to impose the rule's requirements would have been through grants awarded in fiscal year 2022.”
Biden then suspended and then rescinded Trump's executive order lowering insulin costs, before calling on Congress to lower insulin costs in his 2022 State of the Union address, which subsequently included measures to do so in the Stop Inflation Act.
