Speaking the day after Medicare revealed the discounts achieved through negotiations with drugmakers, Harris vowed to not only continue the program but expand it.
“Just yesterday we announced that we are lowering the price by up to 80 percent for 10 more lifesaving drugs and I pledge to continue this progress,” Harris said.
She also proposed expanding to all Americans provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug pricing reform that are currently limited to the Medicare program, like capping insulin costs at $35 per month.
“I’ll lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for everyone, with your support, not only our seniors and demand transparency from the middlemen who operate between Big Pharma and the insurance companies who use opaque practices to raise your drug prices and profit off your need for medicine,” Harris said.
Harris said she would work with states to completely cancel out billions of dollars in medical debt, a dramatic expansion of what President Biden and Harris have accomplished so far.
Earlier this year, the White House moved forward with plans to ban medical debt from being included in credit reports. Through the American Rescue Plan, the White House secured $7 billion to cancel medical debt for up to nearly 3 million Americans.
“I will work as president with states like here in North Carolina — Roy Cooper thank you again — to cancel medical debt for more and more millions more Americans,” she said, referencing North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) medical debt relief plan that was approved last month.
Harris coordinated with Cooper on North Carolina’s pilot program that aims to forgive medical debt for about 2 million low- and middle-income residents.
During her speech, Harris also sought to widen the distance between her plans and those of former President Trump.
“Donald Trump, well he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act which 45 million Americans rely on,” she said.
Republicans made several failed efforts to repeal the ACA while Trump was in office. On the campaign trail, Trump has since backed off promises of repealing the program, instead recently saying he would make it “much better than it is right now.”
During a news conference intended to be about the economy on Thursday, Trump made several attacks at Harris’s plans, claiming she would create a “communist system.”
“You’re going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care. It’s — you wait for your doctor like 10 months, 12 months, 11 months. You got to see some of these plans, how they work in other countries, it’s disgraceful. So private healthcare is gone. She wants it out,” he said.
