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By Jacob Gardenswartz
“Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it.”
Former President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post, June 8
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he — and not President Joe Biden — deserves credit for lowering older Americans’ prescription drug prices, specifically for insulin.
In a June 8 post on Truth Social, the former president’s social platform, Trump wrote: “Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it.”
Trump again claimed sole credit for lowering insulin prices during the June 27 presidential debate in Atlanta. After Biden touted the $35 monthly out-of-pocket cap for Medicare patients mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act, Trump responded: “I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.”
It’s not just the former president making such claims. Fox News anchor John Roberts and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, both have said the Biden administration is wrong to take credit for lowering insulin costs.
Because drug prices and Medicare will likely be issues in the presidential campaign, we dug into the facts surrounding those claims.
Trump is correct that his administration enacted a program to lower insulin costs for some patients on Medicare.
In July 2020, Trump signed an executive order establishing the “Part D Senior Savings Model,” a temporary, voluntary program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that let some Medicare Part D prescription drug plans cap monthly out-of-pocket insulin copay costs at $35 or less. It covered at least one insulin product of each dosage and type.
The program began Jan. 1, 2021, and ran through Dec. 31, 2023. In 2022, the Trump-era program included a total of 2,159 Medicare drug plans, and CMS estimated that more than 800,000 Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin could have benefited from it that year.
An analysis by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think tank, showed the program reduced participants’ out-of-pocket insulin costs by $198 to $441 per year on average, depending on their Medicare plan.
The Department of Health and Human Services has estimated that more than 1.5 million Medicare beneficiaries paid more than $35 a month for insulin in 2020, before Trump’s program took effect. An analysis by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think tank, showed the program reduced participants’ out-of-pocket insulin costs by $198 to $441 per year on average, depending on their Medicare plan.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed and Biden signed into law in August 2022, included an insulin provision that went further than Trump’s voluntary initiative.
The act did cap out-of-pocket costs of insulin for Medicare patients at $35 per month. But whereas the Trump program applied only to certain Medicare Part D plans, the act mandated that all Medicare drug programs cap out-of-pocket insulin costs — including those in what’s known as Medicare Part B, which pays for medical equipment such as insulin pumps. The act’s insulin provisions took effect Jan. 1, 2023, for Part D plans and July 1 of that year for Part B.
The act also mandated that the out-of-pocket price cap apply to all insulin products a given Medicare plan covers, not just a subset.
Taken together, those provisions mean a far greater number of Medicare beneficiaries stand to benefit from the act’s insulin provisions — including people receiving insulin via a pump, who were left out of the Trump-era program.
Some of those people were likely already paying less than $35 per month for their medications, the Inflation Reduction Act benefited far more than the 800,000 patients affected by Trump’s program.
CMS estimates that more than 3.3 million Medicare beneficiaries use one or more of the common forms of insulin. Although some of those people were likely already paying less than $35 per month for their medications, the Inflation Reduction Act benefited far more than the 800,000 patients affected by Trump’s program.
“It’s likely a larger population than under the Trump administration’s model,” said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
“The Trump administration did establish this voluntary model, and one perhaps could view that as some precedent for what we saw in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Cubanski added. “But I think it’s inaccurate to state that President Biden had nothing to do with enabling millions of Americans to benefit from lower insulin copayments.”
Preliminary research shows the Inflation Reduction Act’s insulin provisions had a greater average financial benefit than those in Trump’s program. Insulin-using older Americans were estimated to save an annual average of $501 per person, HHS figures show.
The Inflation Reduction Act has also had an impact beyond Medicare. After the law passed, some pharmaceutical companies — including Eli Lilly and Co., Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Civica Rx — self-imposed price caps for all insured insulin users, not just Medicare patients. During his 2023 State of the Union address, Biden proposed expanding this benefit to all insulin patients, and he’s made that point a staple of his campaign appearances.
“I’m determined to make that apply to every American, not just seniors, in the second term,” he said at a campaign event in May in Philadelphia.
Beyond insulin products, the Inflation Reduction Act caps total out-of-pocket prescription costs at $2,000 annually for people with Medicare drug plans starting in 2025, down from $3,300 this year for most Medicare beneficiaries.
But every congressional Republican opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, including its insulin savings provisions, in 2022, and the law is vulnerable to repeal should Trump take the White House. Trump has repeatedly criticized the law and called for overturning some of its provisions. He has not specified how he would address its health measures.
In an email exchange with KFF Health News, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt highlighted drug savings programs the former president instituted during his term in office, but repeatedly declined to extrapolate on, or defend, Trump’s claim that Biden deserves no credit for lowering insulin costs.
Asked whether Trump intended to maintain the Inflation Reduction Act’s insulin provisions should he win a second term in office, Leavitt wrote, “President Trump will do everything possible to lower drug costs for Americans when he’s back in the White House, just like he accomplished in his first term.”
Trump can claim some credit for lowering insulin costs for seniors, as his administration advanced a voluntary program to do so.
But his claim that Biden had “NOTHING to do with it” is patently false. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law, imposed a mandatory Medicare insulin price cap that applied across the program, benefiting a significantly larger number of insulin users — including people not enrolled in Medicare. We rate Trump’s claim False.
Sources:
Civica Rx, “Civica to Manufacture and Distribute Affordable Insulin,” March 3, 2022
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “Part D Senior Savings Model,” accessed July 2, 2024
CMS, “President Trump Announces Lower Out of Pocket Insulin Costs for Medicare’s Seniors,” May 26, 2020
CNN, “READ: Biden-Trump Debate Transcript,” June 28, 2024Eli
Lilly and Co., “Lilly Cuts Insulin Prices by 70% and Caps Patient Insulin Out-of-Pocket Costs at $35 Per Month,” March 1, 2023
Email exchange with Karoline Leavitt, Donald J. Trump 2024 campaign national press secretary, July 1, 2024
Facebook.com, post by @MikeHuckabee, June 10, 2024
Federal Registrar, “Access to Affordable Life-Saving Medications,” July 24, 2020
Department on Health and Human Services, “Insulin Affordability and the Inflation Reduction Act: Medicare Beneficiary Savings by State and Demographics,” Jan. 24, 2023
KFF, “Changes to Medicare Part D in 2024 and 2025 Under the Inflation Reduction Act and How Enrollees Will Benefit,” April 20, 2023
Novo Nordisk, “Novo Nordisk To Lower U.S. Prices of Several Pre-Filled Insulin Pens and Vials up to 75% for People Living With Diabetes in January 2024,” March 14, 2023
Phone interview with Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of KFF’s Program on Medicare Policy, June 16, 2024
Rand Corp., “Evaluation of the Part D Senior Savings Model,” May 2023
Republican Study Committee, “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” March 20, 2024
Sanofi, “Sanofi Capping Its Insulin to a $35 Out-of-Pocket Costs in the U.S.,” June 1, 2023
Stat, “Biden and Trump Are Fighting To Claim Credit for $35 Insulin. It Was Actually a Pharma Giant’s Idea,” June 13, 2024
The White House, “FACT SHEET: President Biden’s Cap on the Cost of Insulin Could Benefit Millions of Americans in All 50 States,” March 2, 2023
The White House, “Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris at a Campaign Event | Philadelphia, PA,” May 29, 2024
The White House, “Remarks of President Joe Biden — State of the Union Address as Prepared for Delivery,” Feb. 7, 2023
Truthsocial.com, post by @realDonaldTrump, June 8, 2024X.com, post by @justinbaragona, June 3, 2024
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.
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