In the first hour and a half of the supposed hour-and-a-half presidential debate, the pharmaceutical industry was mentioned exactly zero times. Even in an extended and lively back-and-forth at the beginning of the argument over abortion rights, neither the moderators nor the candidates asked about medication abortion, as they did in the fateful Biden-Trump debate in June.
But after about an hour and 31 minutes, Vice President Harris finally spoke about the Medicare drug price negotiation provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act – confusingly, during a conversation about the Affordable Care Act, the landmark Obama-era health insurance law.
“We allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of the American people for the first time,” Harris said. “Donald Trump said he would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. He never did. We did.”
But Harris didn’t just boast about the administration’s accomplishments (and thankfully avoided claiming it “beat” Medicare.) She vowed, as Biden did in June, to expand the $2,000-a-year drug co-payment for seniors – another provision of the IRA – to cover all seniors, not just those covered by Medicare.
“And now we’ve capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month,” Harris said. “Since I’ve been vice president, we’ve capped the cost of prescription drugs for seniors at $2,000 a year, and when I’m president, we’ll do that for all people because I know I can help make access to health care a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.”
President Trump himself did not comment on drug prices at all. Unlike in June, when he blamed Biden’s response on the insulin cap, Trump’s remarks this time focused on the ACA (the original topic, in fairness).
“Obamacare was lousy health care,” he said. “It always was. And it’s not very good today. And I said if we develop something and work on it, we’ll implement it and replace it.”
When asked by a moderator whether he actually had a plan to replace Obamacare, Trump said he had “concepts for a plan.”
Health care was not a major topic of debate. In addition to the aforementioned back-and-forth on abortion, the two candidates briefly sparred over Trump’s response to COVID, but the conversation did not break new ground. In a discussion of the failed border bill, Harris briefly mentioned the opioid epidemic.
In general, the vice president’s strategy in the debate was to focus on values and policy plans and to project positivity and hope to contrast with Trump’s penchant for finger-pointing, name-calling and increasingly insane falsehoods. The strategy seemed to work, with Trump repeating blatantly false — and debunked — claims about immigrants eating pets and Democrats supporting post-natal abortion.
