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Full Transcript of Biden’s State of the Union Address [1]
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Date: 2023-02-08
Not anymore. Not anymore. So many things that we did are only now coming to fruition. We said we were doing this and we said we passed the law to do it, but people didn’t know because the law didn’t take effect until Jan. 1 of this year.
We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare.
People are just finding out. I’m sure you’re getting the same calls I’m getting. Look, there are millions of other Americans who do not or are not on Medicare, including 200,000 young people with Type 1 diabetes who need this insulin to stay alive.
Let’s finish the job this time.
Let’s cap the cost of insulin for everybody at $35.
Folks, Big Pharma is still going to do very well, I promise you all. I promise you, they’re going to do very well. This law also caps — and it won’t even go into effect until 2025 — the cost, out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors on Medicare at a maximum of $2,000 a year. You don’t have to pay more than $2,000 a year no matter how much your drug costs are. Because you know why? You all know it. Many of you, like many in my family, have cancer. You know the drugs can range from $10,000, $11,000, $14,000, $15,000 for the cancer drugs.
And if drug prices rise faster than inflation, drug companies are going to have to pay Medicare back the difference.
And we’re finally — finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices. Bringing down — bringing down prescription drug costs doesn’t just save seniors money.
It cuts the federal deficit by billions of dollars, by hundreds of billions of dollars, because these prescription drugs are drugs purchased by Medicare to keep their commitment to seniors. Well, guess what? Instead of paying $400 or $500 a month, you’re paying $15. That’s a lot of savings for the federal government.
And by the way, why wouldn’t we want that?
Now, some members here are threatening — and I know it’s not an official party position so I’m not going to exaggerate — but threatening to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. As my coach — that’s OK. That’s fair. As my football coach used to say, lots of luck in your senior year.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/biden-state-of-the-union-transcript.html
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