President Biden visits Democratic Party Headquarters in Manchester, NH

Concord, New Hampshire – President Biden touted his administration’s progress in bringing down medication costs during a visit to New Hampshire on Tuesday alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, as the president seeks to cement his policy legacy. 

Mr. Biden said Americans pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs because of the high prices pharmaceutical companies charge. “It’s not capitalism. It’s exploitation when Big Pharma doesn’t play by the rules,” Mr. Biden said. 

Mr. Biden spoke at Concord Community College, where he highlighted a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services that found nearly 1.5 million Medicare enrollees saved nearly $1 billion on prescription drugs in the first half of 2024. Even though it was an official White House event, the president needled former President Trump over the Republican nominee’s comment that he has “concepts” of a health care plan, the latest example of how murky the line between official and political events can be in a presidential election year. 

“I’m trying to be a very good fellow,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m not letting my Irish get the best of me. But my predecessor, the distinguished former president, he wants to replace the Affordable Care Act with what he calls, this is what he refers to it as, a concept of a plan. I’ve heard that concept of a plan now for almost eight years. A concept of a plan — what the hell is a concept of a — he has no concept of anything! No plan!”

The savings are a result of the cap on out-of-pocket drug costs put in place by the Inflation Reduction Act, a signature piece of legislation the president signed into law in 2022. The law capped out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries at $3,500 per year, and next year the cap will go down to $2,000 per year. 

“Congress has talked a lot about this, but just never got much done. And partly it had to do with the fact that Pharma is such a big lobbyist,” Leighton Ku, a professor in the department of health policy and management at George Washington University, said in an interview with CBS News. “So the fact that the Biden administration could work with Congress to get even these marginal things done is impressive.” 

The Biden administration had previously negotiated prices for 10 widely used prescription drugs after a back-and-forth between Medicare and drug manufacturers, and capped insulin at $35 per month for many patients. 

On Monday, the White House also proposed a plan that, if put into effect, would require private insurers to cover over-the-counter birth control methods at no cost to patients.

In a statement released ahead of Tuesday’s event, Sanders praised the administration’s efforts to lower drug prices. “For the first time in history, Medicare is negotiating to lower the prices of some of the most expensive prescription drugs in America,” the Vermont senator said. “But, let’s be clear. Much more needs to be done. In my view, nobody in America should be paying more for prescription drugs than they do in Europe or Canada.” 

Mr. Biden is also expected to make a stop at a campaign office while in the Granite State. 

Kathryn Watson

contributed to this report.

Patient and consumer advocates are looking to Kamala Harris to accelerate federal efforts to help people struggling with medical debt if she prevails in next month’s presidential election.

And they see the vice president and Democratic nominee as the best hope for preserving Americans’ access to health insurance. Comprehensive coverage that limits patients’ out-of-pocket costs offers the best defense against going into debt, experts say.

The Biden administration has expanded financial protections for patients, including a landmark proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to remove medical debt from consumer credit reports.

In 2022, President Joe Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which limits how much Medicare enrollees must pay out-of-pocket for prescription drugs, including a $35-a-month cap on insulin. And in statehouses across the country, Democrats and Republicans have been quietly working together to enact laws to rein in debt collectors.

But advocates say the federal government could do more to address a problem that burdens 100 million Americans, forcing many to take on extra work, give up their homes, and cut spending on food and other essentials.

“Biden and Harris have done more to tackle the medical debt crisis in this country than any other administration,” said Mona Shah, senior director of policy and strategy at Community Catalyst, a nonprofit that has led national efforts to strengthen protections against medical debt. “But there is more that needs to be done and should be a top priority for the next Congress and administration.”

At the same time, patient advocates fear that if former President Donald Trump wins a second term, he will weaken insurance protections by allowing states to cut their Medicaid programs or by scaling back federal aid to help Americans buy health insurance. That would put millions of people at greater risk of sinking into debt if they get sick.

In his first term, Trump and congressional Republicans in 2017 tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move that independent analysts concluded would have stripped health coverage from millions of Americans and driven up costs for people with preexisting medical conditions, such as diabetes and cancer.

Trump and his GOP allies continue to attack the ACA, and the former president has said he wants to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes aid to help low- and middle-income Americans buy health insurance.

“People will face a wave of medical debt from paying premiums and prescription drug prices,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a consumer group that has backed federal health protections. “Patients and the public should be concerned.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to inquiries about its health care agenda. And the former president doesn’t typically discuss health care or medical debt on the campaign trail, though he said at last month’s debate he had “concepts of a plan” to improve the ACA. Trump hasn’t offered specifics.

Harris has repeatedly pledged to protect the ACA and renew expanded subsidies for monthly insurance premiums created by the Inflation Reduction Act. That aid is slated to expire next year.

The vice president has also voiced support for more government spending to buy and retire old medical debts for patients. In recent years, a number of states and cities have purchased medical debt on behalf of their residents.

These efforts have relieved debt for hundreds of thousands of people, though many patient and consumer advocates say retiring old debt is at best a short-term solution, as patients will continue to run up bills they cannot pay without more substantive action.

“It’s a boat with a hole in it,” said Katie Berge, a lobbyist for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The patient group was among more than 50 organizations that last year sent letters to the Biden administration urging federal agencies to take more aggressive steps to protect Americans from medical debt.

“Medical debt is no longer a niche issue,” said Kirsten Sloan, who works on federal policy for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “It is key to the economic well-being of millions of Americans.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is developing regulations that would bar medical bills from consumer credit reports, which would boost credit scores and make it easier for millions of Americans to rent an apartment, get a job, or secure a car loan.

Harris, who has called medical debt “critical to the financial health and well-being of millions of Americans,” enthusiastically backed the proposed rule. “No one should be denied access to economic opportunity simply because they experienced a medical emergency,” she said in June.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has said his own family struggled with medical debt when he was young, signed a state law in June cracking down on debt collection.

CFPB officials said the regulations would be finalized early next year. Trump hasn’t indicated if he’d follow through on the medical debt protections. In his first term, the CFPB did little to address medical debt, and congressional Republicans have long criticized the regulatory agency.

If Harris prevails, many consumer groups want the CFPB to crack down even further, including tightening oversight of medical credit cards and other financial products that hospitals and other medical providers have started pushing on patients. These loans lock people into interest payments on top of their medical debt.

“We are seeing a variety of new medical financial products,” said April Kuehnhoff, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “These can raise new concerns about consumer protections, and it is critical for the CFPB and other regulators to monitor these companies.”

Some advocates want other federal agencies to get involved, as well.

This includes the mammoth Health and Human Services Department, which controls hundreds of billions of dollars through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. That money gives the federal government enormous leverage over hospitals and other medical providers.

Thus far, the Biden administration hasn’t used that leverage to tackle medical debt.

But in a potential preview of future actions, state leaders in North Carolina recently won federal approval for a medical debt initiative that will make hospitals take steps to alleviate patient debts in exchange for government aid. Harris praised the initiative.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

New Delhi: India’s apex drug regulator is collating information on adverse events due to medical devices to take timely action against manufacturers and ensure appropriate measures to mitigate risks to public health as the number of such incidents rise.

The Drugs Controller of General of India has issued a prescribed format to collect information on undesired effects from medical devices and in-vitro-medical devices (IVDs), ensuring that the identity of the ‘patient’ or the ‘complainant’ will not be made public. The proforma has to be filled with details such as description of the medical device with details including the brand name, manufacturer, importer or distributor. 

The DCGI has urged people to send the duly filled form to the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission, a body under the health ministry, which runs the government’s Materiovigilance Programme of India (MvPI) platform to monitor adverse events associated with medical devices in India.

The regulatory action is aimed at stricter surveillance of side effects from medical devices, a market that is estimated to expand from $11 billion to $50 billion by 2030. Mint earlier reported about DCGI directing all medical device licence holders and manufacturers to report any adverse events related to life-saving medical equipment on the MvPI platform.

Safety concerns

Unlike drugs, absolute safety in medical devices—which are engineering, not chemical, products — may not be possible, according to said Rajiv Nath , forum coordinator, AiMeD, an umbrella body of medical device manufacturers in India.

There needs to be post marketing surveillance of serious adverse events that lead to death or injuries requiring surgical intervention, he said. What’s important that such events have to be reported to manufacturers to enable faster and direct redressal or the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission or the regulator, using the feedback for systemic reviews, he said.

Medical devices are therapeutic, diagnostic, therapeutic & diagnostic, implantable, non-implantable, invasive & non-invasive, single-use device, reusable, sterile & non-sterile, and for personal use and homecare.

Nath said the reports on adverse events from such devices should not result in witch-hunting and a trust factor needs to be created to persecute the one reporting—whether it’s a health care provider or patient or the manufacturer itself.

Lack of clarity

DCGI, in its public notice, said the submission of a Medical Devices Adverse Event (MDAE) does not constitute an admission that medical personnel or manufacturer or the product caused or contributed to the adverse event and also “does not have any legal implication on the reporter”.

 “The patient/reporter’s identity is held in strict confidence and protected to the fullest extent. Programme staff is not expected to and will not disclose the patient/reporter’s identity in response to a request from the public,” it said.

Citing regulations in the US and the European Union, Nath also stressed on clarity for “what’s reportable and what’s not—what’s a serious adverse event and what’s a non-serious adverse event”.

“Currently there’s a lot of confusion and lack of clarity at various levels, so either there’s under-reporting or an extreme of over reporting at some organizations or not reporting to manufacturer but reporting to regulators,” he said. “Webinars and public education will help to bring clarity and build a trust factor.”

Vice President Kamala Harris is proposing an expansion of Medicare to cover the costs of an in-home aide for many seniors, a direct pitch to the “sandwich generation” of adults caring for aging parents in addition to their own children. 

The plan, dubbed “Medicare at Home,” focuses on having Medicare cover costs of home care services and nurses as a way for families to help avoid costs of nursing homes. Harris is pairing it with a plan she’s already announced that would expand the child care tax credit to up to $3,600, and $6,000 for parents with newborns. 

Harris unveiled the plan in a Tuesday interview on “The View” talk show, where she talked about her own experience taking care of her mother while she had cancer. 

She emphasized that her plan would be an expansion of Medicare, rather than Medicaid. This would enable it to coexist with private insurance. Medicaid also has certain stricter eligibility rules.

About a quarter of U.S. adults are part of the sandwich generation of those taking care of children and aging parents, according to census data. A Harris campaign official says its  internal data shows this demographic of caregivers has a substantial number of undecided voters. 

“In an election this close, proposals that speak to the financial security and health care needs of older Americans will resonate and can make a difference,” said Rich Fiesta, the executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, who has a PAC running anti-Trump advertisements. 

A September AARP poll showed that 78% of women who are over 50 years old and care for older family members say they’ve been struggling financially. Another AARP poll in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state, showed former president Donald Trump with an edge among voters 50 and over: 53% for Trump and 44% for Harris. 

Except for the poorest seniors, for whom Medicaid can pick up the tab, most older adults have to rely on their own savings or family members for home care when they can no longer handle all of their daily needs but aren’t ready to move to a long-term care facility.

“We increasingly encounter families that want to qualify for Medicaid today that aren’t considered the lowest income, but for whom providing and paying for long-term care is making them low income,” said Kevin Prindiville, executive director of the group Justice in Aging.

Democrats have accused Trump of supporting cuts to Medicare’s budget during his term in the White House, a charge that the Republican candidate has denied. 

While he floated the idea in a March CNBC interview, saying, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting,” he then suggested that these cuts would affect “the theft and the bad management of entitlements.” 

He has since said he won’t “cut one penny” from Social Security or Medicare, and the Republican Party platform has similar language. 

How much would “Medicare at home” cost?

Adding Medicare coverage for home care could start at $40 billion annually, according to an estimate from a Brookings Institution study cited by the campaign.

However, the authors of the study caution that their figure is only a starting point for a “very conservatively designed universal program.” The ultimate price tag could be significantly higher, depending on how generous Congress is willing to be. 

“It’s not saying it’s the program we should adopt, but just that you could make this work for dollars that are not crazy,” said Jonathan Gruber, chairman of the economics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the estimate.

Gruber said the modeling also did not factor in major savings that the benefit could spur as ripple effects, like less money spent on nursing homes or family members who would be able to return to full-time jobs. 

“We think we’re going to free potentially millions of informal care workers to go earn income in the labor market. And they’re going to pay taxes,” he said.

How would Harris pay for Medicare at home?

Harris said her expansion will be paid for mainly by expanding the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, combined with a list of other reforms, like increasing the discounts that drugmakers would have to offer for brand-name prescriptions. 

This is not the first time that Harris has pledged to expand the Inflation Reduction Act’s policies targeting prescription drug prices. Medicare is currently on track to save only $31 billion each year from the negotiation program and other drug price provisions, which would fall short of covering even the starting price tag for her proposal. 

Harris has called on Congress to broaden the drug negotiation program, accelerating the pace of new price caps set by Medicare and making more drugs subject to the limits. More aggressive drug price negotiations could save hundreds of billions over the next decade, according to a Stanford University white paper cited by the campaign, assuming it’s able to survive an uphill battle on Capitol Hill.

Marc Cohen is the co-director of a center focused on long-term services and support backed by LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit providers of aging services. LeadingAge has called for adding home care to Medicare for years, as a fix to the “dangerously broken” system.

“At some point we will need to talk about a source, like Medicare itself, to pay for it. But I think that’s a very clever idea right now for getting this going. And then what you do is develop a constituency of political support, even for the young generation to say, ‘I want this to be available for my parents,'” Cohen, a professor of gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said.

Who would be covered by Harris’ Medicare at Home” proposal?

All Medicare enrollees deemed to be “unable to independently perform activities of daily living like bathing, eating and going to the bathroom” would be eligible after being screened by physicians or nurses, according to the campaign’s proposal. People with “serious cognitive impairment” would also be covered.

Not everyone would get all their costs paid for by Medicare. Seniors with higher incomes would have to pay a larger share of the cost out of their own pockets.

The details of that coverage are a big factor that could also impact the cost of the plan, affecting how many Americans end up taking advantage of the proposed benefit.

Only home care aides “designated by Medicare” would be covered under the proposal, which would include “any qualified home health aides, personal care attendants, or direct care workers recognized by their state.” 

The campaign did not address whether family members would be able to be paid with cash for taking care of an older relative, as a previous bill by House Democrats had proposed.

Prindiville said that was among the things they were hoping for in the details of the proposal, as lawmakers try to “strike the right balance” to make home care more affordable. 

“When families want to provide that care, let’s pay them for it so that economically it makes sense,” said Prindiville.

Caring for grandparents as they age is a deeply meaningful way to show love and gratitude, while also honoring their legacy and the wisdom they’ve shared over the years. 

Here are 6 strategies as shared by Neha Sinha, Dementia Specialist, CEO, and Co-founder of Epoch Elder Care  to support your grandparents as they navigate health challenges:

 

Encourage Connections: As grandchildren, there are many ways you can help prevent your grandparents from feeling isolated. Simple actions like sitting with them for a chat, involving them in daily conversations, and including them in family decisions or celebrations can make a big difference.  Encourage them to socialise, join groups or meet with friends, but also make time to share meals together at the dining table or celebrate special occasions. These moments of connection will not only bring joy but help them feel valued and an integral part of the family, keeping isolation at bay. 

Encourage Open Communications: Open communication is vital in managing the emotions of your loved grandparents. It opens up trust and understanding between family members and caregivers to express their thoughts, feelings, and concerns freely. This form of communication may also address all fears and anxieties that your loved ones may be experiencing due to ageing, ill health, or loss of personal independence, thereby providing some sort of consolation and emotional relief. 

Regular Health Assessments: Health check-ups for your loved grandparents are of paramount importance, which will ensure that any recognized potential health problems are treated on time. Most chronic diseases, including heart and diabetes diseases and even cognitive impairment, develop silently in time and usually progress without any subjective symptoms. 

Encourage Physical Activity: Regular physical activity is essential for your grandparents’ overall well-being. Encouraging simple exercises—like walking, gardening, or gentle stretching—promotes mobility and strength. Engaging in these activities helps them feel more energized and enhances their quality of life. 

Engage in Cognitive Activities: Engage them with a puzzle, game, or memory exercise, which would stimulate their cognitive capabilities and make them have fun interactions with you so their minds remain sharp. 

Prioritize Mental Health: It is important to realize that elders after being the symbol of strength to us for most of their lives may feel lonely which is detrimental to their mental health with time as they retire, lose friends, or even their spouse. They may face mental health challenges like anxiety, or depression. Their mental well-being is just as significant as physical care. Solutions such as therapy, counselling, or medications can help.