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.

Federal regulators are accusing the country’s three largest pharmacy benefit managers of illegally driving up the cost of insulin in the U.S., while making it harder for patients to obtain cheaper versions of the life-saving drug. 

The companies — CVS-owned Caremark Rx, Cigna Group’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx — acted in ways that stifled industry competition for insulin drugs, including by using unfair rebating practices, the Federal Trade Commission said Friday.

That artificially raised the list price of insulin, creating what the agency characterized as a “drug rebate system that prioritizes high rebates” from drugmakers, the FTC alleged in announcing lawsuits against the three businesses and their affiliates. 

Pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs, manage prescription drug plans for health insurance programs, including Medicare, and serve as intermediaries with pharmacies, employers and drugmakers. Caremark, Express Scripts and Optum together administer roughly 80% of all prescriptions in the U.S., according to the FTC.

“Millions of Americans with diabetes need insulin to survive, yet for many of these vulnerable patients, their insulin drug costs have skyrocketed over the past decade thanks in part to powerful PBMs and their greed,” Rahul Rao, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. “Caremark, ESI, and Optum — as medication gatekeepers — have extracted millions of dollars off the backs of patients who need life-saving medications.”

Patient advocates, lawmakers and other critics have long accused PBMs of driving up drug costs, though the companies say they help control health care expenses and pass along savings to their clients.

CVS Caremark and Optum disputed the FTC’s allegations.

“CVS Caremark is proud of the work we have done to make insulin more affordable for all Americans with diabetes. To suggest anything else, as the FTC did today, is simply wrong,” the company said in a statement to CBS News. 

A CVS spokesperson also said the company has a record of protecting patients from rising prescription drug prices and that it has “led the way in driving down the cost of insulin for all patients.” 

CVS members on average pay less than $25 for insulin, according the company, which added that it negotiates deep discounts for its clients.

Optum called the FTC’s claims “baseless.”

“For many years, Optum Rx has aggressively and successfully negotiated with drug manufacturers and taken additional actions to lower prescription insulin costs for our health plan customers and their members, who now pay an average of less than $18 per month for insulin,” the company said in a statement to CBS News. 

Express Scripts said the FTC has chosen “to ignore the facts and score political points, rather than focus on its duty to protect consumers.”

Far higher costs in U.S.

Insulin costs have skyrocketed in the U.S. over the past two decades, putting the cost of care out of reach for many Americans. some of whom are forced to ration the drug or skip treatment. 

Adjusted for inflation, between 2017 and 2022 the cost of insulin in the U.S. rose 24%, according to the American Diabetes Association. But the gross price of insulin is more than 900% higher on average in the U.S., compared with the cost in 33 developed economies around the world, according to a February RAND report. 

Even after factoring in discounts from drugmakers, the cost of insulin in the U.S. was more than double that in comparable countries, the nonprofit think tank found. 

“Insulin prices in the United States have been increasing for many years and are substantially higher than in other middle- and high-income nations,” Andrew Mulcahy, the study’s lead author and a senior health economist at RAND, said in the report.

—The Associated Press contributed to this report