Center for American Progress Action

Opinion: Being sick is expensive. I’m grateful Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act lowered my insulin costs
In the News

Opinion: Being sick is expensive. I’m grateful Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act lowered my insulin costs

Pam Bloink, a retired teacher living with chronic health conditions, shares her perspective on the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which has cut her yearly insulin costs in half.

The Stories team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund works with storytellers who author op-eds about how policy impacts their lives. The team helps elevate their op-eds.

As any person living with chronic health conditions will tell you, being sick is expensive.

I recently calculated that I spent $1,068 last year on insulin. And this high cost doesn’t even account for my other medical treatments and prescriptions. This is why I’m grateful for President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has reduced insulin and prescription costs for Michigan seniors and retirees like me.

Thanks to the IRA, I, like millions of other Americans benefiting from the insulin copay cap, now pay just $35 a month for one of my two insulins. I will pay $528 for insulin this year because of the IRA—less than half of what I spent last year. That’s a huge difference. The Biden administration’s work on the issue of drug pricing has brought some much-needed relief to my life as I manage my diabetes and unrelated illnesses.

The above excerpt was originally published in The 'Gander. Click here to view the full article.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Author

Pam Bloink

Retired teacher

Team

Digital Advocacy

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.