President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rallied supporters around their vision to lower health care costs and strengthen the Affordable Care Act during a visit to North Carolina on Tuesday. It marked the latest stop on Biden’s post-State of the Union swing state tour as he looks to put the Tar Heel State into play this November.
Speaking at a community center in Raleigh on Tuesday, Biden touted what he considers some of his most significant accomplishments in terms of health care costs, such as enabling Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, capping insulin costs at $35 a month and total out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year for seniors on Medicare.
“Folks, I want to extend those savings to everyone who needs lifesaving insulin, whether you’re a senior or not — everyone, everyone,” Biden said of the insulin price cap before later echoing that message when it comes to the $2,000 a year ceiling.
The president has also called for Medicare to have the power to negotiate the price of 50 drugs per year rather than 20.
It comes less than a week after the White House marked the 14th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, highlighting that a record 21.4 million people enrolled in health insurance plans through its marketplaces during the 2024 open enrollment period.
“The president has really built on the Affordable Care Act to make it more affordable and accessible than ever,” White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden told Spectrum News.
The White House pointed to the expansion of tax credits intended to increase the affordability of marketplace coverage included in two of Biden’s signature pieces of legislation — the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act — as aiding in the increase.
Biden on Tuesday reiterated his call for Congress to permanently extend such credits in the IRA.
“I enacted tax credits that save an average of $800 per person per year, reducing healthcare premiums for millions of working families under the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “Those tax credits expire next year. I’m calling on Congress to make that $800 expanded affordable healthcare tax credit permanent.”
He went on to rebuke Republicans for seeking to repeal the sweeping health care overhaul signed by former President Barack Obama when Biden was vice president.
“But Donald Trump and his MAGA friends are, if nothing, persistent. They’ve tried to repeal it 50 times. Not a joke,” the president said. “Fifty times they’ve tried to repeal it, but we stopped them every time.”
Biden pointed to the 2025 budget proposal released by the Republican Study Committee last week that the White House says would cut $4.5 in federal spending related to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Republicans’ crusade against Obamacare largely quieted in the years after three GOP senators voted against repealing it during the Trump administration in 2017. But former President Donald Trump reawakened the fight last year when he warned the legislation could be on the chopping block again should he win back the White House in 2024.
“The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare. I’m seriously looking at alternatives,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social.
That comment sparked a rapid response from the Biden campaign, which sent a flurry of emails warning about the impacts of the bill being repealed and calling on Pelosi to host a press call on the topic with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
“But even during the deadly pandemic, Trump and his MAGA friends in Congress wanted to get rid of the ACA, kick millions of Americans off their health insurance,” Biden said. “It’s sick.”
While a competitive state that Biden hopes he can flip in 2024, North Carolina is also particularly relevant to the president's health care message. The state is the most recent to adopt the Medicaid expansion — which ten states have not done — made possible by the ACA. More than 600,000 residents in North Carolina are expected to qualify as a result of the move.
At one point in his speech Biden was interrupted by protesters expressing concerns over the war in Gaza — a scenario that has occurred often at Biden’s public events over the last six months since the start of the war.
“What about the healthcare in Gaza?” a protester shouted.
“They have a point,” Biden, who has emphasized — especially recently — the need to get more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory, responded. “We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”
Biden’s trip to North Carolina marked the last stop on his swing state tour following his State of the Union address earlier this month. The president already notched visits to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona – all considered major 2024 battlegrounds and all states Biden won in 2020, the first time he faced Trump.
This year, the president’s reelection team is looking to put North Carolina — a state that picked Trump in 2020 and 2016 and has only voted for a Democratic candidate for president once in the last four decades — on the map.
"We are taking North Carolina incredibly seriously and we're building off the work the party has been doing in the state to really organize everywhere, especially in those rural areas that have often been overlooked in the past,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Spectrum News. “We know that a state like North Carolina is going to be tight so we have to organize at the margins.”
In a memo, Biden’s 2024 campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez noted the Tar Heel State was the closest state in the country in which Trump ultimately won.
Munoz noted the campaign is ramping up travel and paid media to target the state.
“It's all about earning, not asking for the support of a coalition that wins in a state like North Carolina. That means putting in the work, on the ground, just like the party is doing,” he said.
Biden visited the state in January to highlight a new investment in high-speed internet and promote his economic agenda before swinging by local fast food joint Cook Out with Cooper.