Voters more aware of drug pricing in Inflation Reduction Act: Poll
FILE – President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrive for an event on prescription drug costs, in the East Room of the White House, Aug. 29, 2023, in Washington. The Biden administration is putting pharmaceutical companies on notice. It’s warning them that if the price of certain drugs is too high, they might allow other companies to make their product. Under the new plan, the government would consider overriding the patent for high-priced drugs that have been developed with the help of taxpayer money. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
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President Biden’s messaging about lowering the cost of prescription drugs through the Inflation Reduction Act is resonating with more people, but most voters overall are still unaware of some key provisions, according to a new poll from health policy research group KFF.
Lowering health costs has been a key reelection message for Biden, and he has touted passage of the IRA as a signature achievement.
Awareness of the 2-year-old law is highest among voters 65 years old and older, a group that is mostly covered by Medicare and tends to vote at higher rates than younger adults.
The poll found 52 percent of older voters are aware of the IRA’s $35 cap on insulin for people with Medicare, compared with 44 percent in November. Among all voters, only 35 percent said they were aware of the cap, which is still an increase from 28 percent in November.
About 48 percent of older voters said they knew of a law that requires the federal government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, while about a third of overall voters correctly said the same.
Awareness of the IRA’s other Medicare drug pricing provisions has not changed significantly among all voters since November, but there have been increases in awareness of some provisions among Democratic voters and older voters, the poll noted.
That increase could be an encouraging sign that messaging on the successes of the IRA may be breaking through with some groups, but the overall low awareness shows the challenges the campaign is facing.
Large, bipartisan shares of voters said they support Biden’s proposals to extend some of the IRA’s drug provisions to cover all adults with private insurance, including capping monthly costs for insulin and placing a limit on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs.
However, most voters overall are pessimistic about what either candidate would accomplish in the drug pricing area if elected.
The poll gave Biden a slight edge among independent voters, as about half said it is likely that his administration’s policies will lower prescription drug costs if he is elected. About 4 in 10 said the same about former President Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.
But neither candidate had a clear lead on addressing high health care costs, as 38 percent of voters said they trust Biden and 36 percent said they trust Trump.
The survey was conducted April 23-May 1 among a nationally representative sample of 1,479 U.S. adults. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points, and is plus or minus 4 percentage points for registered voters.
