President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris finish speaking about their administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs during an event at Prince George’s Community College in Largo on August 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Stephanie AP
Joe Biden shared a key economic victory with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Thursday (August 15, 2024), after securing a cut on drug prices that could resonate with U.S. voters worried about the cost of living.
The 81-year-old president and 59-year-old vice president announced the deal as they prepared to make their first joint trip since Mr. Biden’s seismic decision to drop out of the presidential election less than a month ago.
The “historic” agreement with drugmakers will reduce the price of 10 key medicines for seniors, for conditions including diabetes, heart failure and blood clots, they said in joint statements released by the White House.
The deal will save older Americans $1.5 billion and the Medicare federal health insurance scheme $6 billion in the first year, the statements added.
While the deal was Mr. Biden’s brainchild, he appears to have chosen to share the credit with Ms. Harris as she ramps up her battle with Republican Donald Trump ahead of November’s election.
Ms. Harris has already made bringing down high prices a key plank of her election campaign and will hope the announcement on medicines will win over voters who have long been struggling with inflation.
U.S. residents face the highest prescription drug prices in the world, leaving many people to pay partly out of their own pocket, despite already exorbitant insurance premiums.
The pair will hail the drug price deal at an event in Maryland — their first outing together in the aftermath of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from the election following a disastrous debate with Trump.
Mr. Biden highlighted Ms. Harris’s role, saying the “historic milestone” was only possible because the post-COVID Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Congress after his vice president cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
Ms. Harris added in her statement: “President Biden and I will never stop fighting for the health, wellbeing, and financial stability of the American people.”
‘Break with Biden’
It comes a day before Ms. Harris is due to set out her own economic agenda in a speech on Friday, and ahead of her star turn at the Democratic National Convention next week.
The United States’s first female, Black and South Asian vice president has already breathed new life into the Democratic Party after the trauma of Mr. Biden’s departure.
But while she has wiped out Trump’s lead in the opinion polls and drawn huge crowds to her rallies, she has yet to spell out her policies beyond broad brush strokes.
That includes largely adopting Mr. Biden’s economic agenda so far, including his vows to eradicate “junk fees” and bring down housing costs.
Ms. Harris is also trying to keep some distance from Mr. Biden’s policies and set out her own stall.
The news outlet Axios reported on Wednesday that Ms. Harris wants to “break with Mr. Biden on issues on which he’s unpopular,” with rising prices being top of the list.
Inflation has dogged Mr. Biden’s presidency, with many voters rating him poorly on the economy despite otherwise good numbers for jobs and growth.
Conversely, more people now trust the vice president to handle the economy than Trump, at 42% to 41%, according to a Financial Times and University of Michigan poll.
Before she took the reins, Mr. Biden was at 35%, while Trump’s number is unchanged.
Trump will try to steal their thunder as he holds a press conference shortly after the event.
The Republican former president, who survived an assassination attempt on July 13, has so far struggled to deal with an upended election campaign after the Democratic Party’s candidate switch.
Trump gave a speech that was meant to focus on the economy on Wednesday — but ended up veering off into personal insults, calling Ms. Harris a “crazy person,” Mr. Biden “stupid” and Ms. Harris’s running mate Tim Walz a “clown.”
