President Joe Biden is visiting Florida on Tuesday, where he delivered a speech to mark a contrast between his efforts to lower health care costs and some Republicans’ proposals to take a new look at federal programs like Medicare and Social Security.
One week before the final day of midterm election voting, the president in South Florida will point to his accomplishments this year to lower costs, especially for seniors – his sweeping climate, tax and health care bill capped prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year under Medicare and set a price on insulin, too.
And it also paid for the lower premiums under the Affordable Care Act that first began as pandemic relief. Tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of open enrollment under the ACA.
The president in Florida is also campaigning for Democrats running for top office: Gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Rep. Val Demings, who is vying to oust Marco Rubio from the Senate.
Florida is the home of Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee proposed an 11-point plan that includes sunsetting all federal legislation within five years, which could include programs like Medicare and Social Security. Scott has noted that his plan doesn't intend to end the programs but perhaps rework them.
President Biden said Americans were "under siege" from the GOP, holding up a paper brochure spelling out Scott's plan.
"These programs do something so basic and so important. Almost half of all seniors in United States lived in poverty before social security," he said.
Biden said people who pay into Social Security throughout their life deserve to have it there when they retire.
"Those are more than government programs. They're a promise, a promise we made as a country," he said. "Once you work hard and contribute, when it comes time to retire, we're going to be there for you. We're going to be there for the basic needs."
The White House pointed out on Tuesday that 63 million Americans benefit from Medicare, 65 million from Social Security and 89 million from Medicaid.
Another core tenet of Biden's health care effort has been prescription drug costs; he again on Tuesday criticized pharamceutical companies for raising prices each year despite medications staying largely the same.
Biden called the price of his son Beau's medicines when he had brain cancer "enormous," and pointed out that while insulin costs about $10 to make, drug companies often price it much higher.
"It's about basic standard of living for ordinary Americans. What the drug companies are doing now is really inflating the cost of living, and we're doing something about it," he said, pointing to the $35 insulin cap for Medicare recipients in Democrats' sweeping climate, tax and health care bill, and the measure that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
If Republicans take back power in Congress, top GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California affirmed last week that one of his first priorities would be to repeal some of the tax provisions in that bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. However, Biden would veto any of those changes while he remains in office.
“If we win the House, we can stop the really bad stuff happening,” McCarthy told Breitbart. “If we have the Senate as well, there's some stronger levers we can do.”
If the IRA is repealed, according to a White House fact sheet, 3.3 million people on Medicare could see insulin costs go up, 13 million could pay $800 more, on average, for health insurance under the ACA and 1.4 million would lose a cap on prescription drug costs.