President Joe Biden speaks about his administration's plans to protect Social Security and Medicare and lower healthcare costs, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, at the University of Tampa in Tampa, Fla.
Seven in 10 Democrats approve of how Biden is handling the issue of prescription drug prices, compared to about a third of independents and about a quarter of Republicans. Even so, Republicans are still much more likely to approve of how Biden is handling prescription drug prices than they are to approve of his job efforts overall .Even among the Americans who support allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, approval of Biden’s handling of the issue remains relatively tepid.
Esperanza Baeza, a teacher’s assistant in Chicago, said she was recently prescribed medication that was prohibitively expensive, and she had to comparison shop before she found drugs that were relatively affordable. She said while she understood that presidents can’t fix all problems, she wondered whether Biden was doing enough on the issue of drug pricing.
The new price negotiations come from a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, a package of Democratic priorities signed into law last year that focuses largely on climate and health care policies. The White House last month formally rolled out the first 10 drugs that Medicare will negotiate on, which include the blood thinner Eliquis and Jardiance, a diabetes treatment.
“They only negotiated on 10 drugs,” said Daily, who said she is a political independent and holds fiscally conservative views. “It should’ve been across the board; every one of the drugs that Medicare pays for should be negotiated.”