President Donald Trump issued more than three dozen executive orders in his first week in office covering immigration, energy policy, diversity programs, and more. One order he issued, which rescinded President Joe Biden’s 2022 “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans” executive order, has been misinterpreted, prompting social media users to claim falsely that Trump raised the price of insulin.
“Rescinding the cap on insulin at $35 only makes pharmaceutical richer and everyday Americans, including MAGA voters, seriously poorer,” Steven Bechloss—author of the Substack, America, America—posted to the Bluesky social media platform.
MeidasTouch contributor and YouTuber “Tennessee Brando” made a similar claim in a video posted to Facebook. “Joe Biden is the one who brought it [insulin] down to $35, and Donald Trump’s the one who came in on day one, signed the executive order, and now it’s back up to $300-500,” he said. “That’s what you voted for.”
“Donald Trump has cancelled the $35 a month Insulin cap,” tweeted one X user with nearly 200,000 followers. “Prices are expected to almost instantly go back to $1500 a month.” Another X user shared her reaction in a tweet viewed by 3.8 million users. “Donald Judas Trump just rescinded Biden’s bill, that lowered 50 prescription drugs, including capping insulin at $35 for people on Medicare,” she wrote.
Trump’s executive order did not repeal the $35 insulin cap for Medicare recipients. The cap was not a part of Biden’s rescinded executive order, which directed the secretary of health and human services to “consider whether” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center should test “new health care payment and delivery models that would lower drug costs and promote access to innovative drug therapies for beneficiaries.” The insulin cap was enacted through federal legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. As such, it can be changed only by an act of Congress.
Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Per a White House statement at the time, the provision would cover 3.3 million Medicare recipients. Since then, several pharmaceutical companies have set a $35 price for insulin for patients with private insurance or implemented other price caps.
In March 2020, the Trump-led CMS agency introduced a voluntary program for seniors who require insulin—about 800,000 individuals, per CMS’ estimation—that capped prices at $35 a month. “Under the Trump Administration’s model, participating plans were not required to cover all insulin products at the $35 monthly copayment amount, just one of each dosage form (vial, pen) and insulin type (rapid-acting, short-acting, intermediate-acting, and long-acting),” wrote Juliette Cubanski and Tricia Neuman of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan group that specializes in health care policy analysis. The Inflation Reduction Act’s provision extended the $35 monthly price control to all insulin products and types covered by the Medicare program. The second Trump administration has yet to either make any policy changes to insulin price caps or call on Congress to do so.
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