President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will be in North Carolina on Tuesday where they are expected to present a wide-ranging and multifaceted vision for protecting and strengthening the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare and lowering healthcare costs, including prescription drugs.

What You Need To Know

  • President Biden and Vice President Harris will be in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday to present their plan for reducing healthcare costs for Americans

  • Biden and Harris plan to present a wide-ranging and multifaceted vision for protecting and strengthening the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare

  • The administration would like to make lowered health insurance premiums permanent

  • Their plan also calls for letting Medicare negotiate drug prices for a minimum of 50 drugs each year

“The difference is simple,” Assistant and Senior Advisor to the President Anita Dunn said Monday during a press preview of Tuesday’s North Carolina visit. “The President and Vice President have always believed that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.”

On Tuesday, Biden and Harris are expected to introduce a broad plan for lowering health insurance premiums and decreasing prescription drug costs even lower than what they have already arranged through the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA gave Medicare the ability to negotiate lower costs for prescriptions such as insulin to $35 and cap out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 starting next year.

The administration is expected to announce a plan to make permanent the lowered health insurance premiums enabled by the IRA and to provide Medicaid to the ten states that have not yet adopted the expansion.

They also plan to invest billions in home healthcare, expand Medicare coverage and private insurance to increase mental healthcare access and implement protections against surprise billing for ambulance rides.

In addition, their plan will call for letting Medicare negotiate drug prices for a minimum of 50 drugs each year and to cap out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year for everyone, including people with private insurance.

Biden was vice president when Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law 14 years ago. Since then, Dunn said Republicans have attempted to repeal the law more than 50 times. Last week, the Republican Study Committee Budget proposed reducing $4.5 trillion from the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In 2024, a record 21 million Americans signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage in 40 states, including Washington, D.C. Dunn pointed out that 9 million more Americans signed up for the ACA this year compared with 2021, when Biden first took office.  

Four of those states signed up to expand Medicaid since Biden took office, including North Carolina, where more than 1 million residents receive medical coverage through the ACA and 400,000 are covered through the Medicaid expansion. Combined, the ACA and Medicaid cover 45 million people nationally, according to the White House.