“I Was the One Who Got the $35 Insulin”: Trump’s Claims Disputed by Harris Campaign and Health Experts
Former President Donald Trump reiterated his misleading claim that he was responsible for lowering the monthly out-of-pocket price cap on insulin for Medicare recipients to $35. The statement he posted on Truth Social was met with pushback from Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and a leading health policy organization.
“I was the one who got the $35 Insulin, not Lyin’ Kamala,” Trump declared in his post on Tuesday night. The post veered into various topics, as he criticized job creation statistics and made claims about Vice President Harris’s past. “I’ve never seen a group that lies so much, like making up, out of thin air, that the U.S. produced 818,000 New Jobs, when it was a total fraud that they had to recant; or that she worked so hard at McDonald’s, BUT SHE NEVER WORKED THERE. They even said that they knew nothing about Deranged Jack Smith going after their political opponent, ME – And that was the biggest lie of them all. But fear not, we will WIN and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he ranted.
In response, Harris’s campaign refuted Trump’s statement, labeling it “a blatant lie.” The campaign’s rapid response team released a fact check after Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), echoed the same claim at a rally in September. “Trump got insulin down to $35 a vial. Thank Donald Trump for that,” Vance said. “Don’t let Kamala Harris lie and take credit for it.”
Harris’s campaign clarified, “Trump did not cap insulin costs; Biden-Harris did for seniors through the Inflation Reduction Act.” They continued in their social media post, “Trump’s Project 2025 wants to repeal it, which would raise insulin costs for over a million Americans.” The campaign emphasized that the Biden administration’s initiative was responsible for implementing the $35 cap for Medicare enrollees, benefiting millions of seniors.
Supporting Harris’s campaign’s rebuttal, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a non-profit health information organization, released a report earlier this year titled “The Facts About the $35 Insulin Copay Cap in Medicare.” The report highlighted that Trump’s claim was inaccurate, noting that the price cap was achieved through the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The KFF report also compared Trump’s administration’s approach, which featured a “voluntary, time-limited model” that reduced costs for about 800,000 insulin users, to Biden’s more extensive plan, which was available to an estimated 3.3 million people in 2020. The findings underscored that the Biden-Harris administration had taken significant steps to expand access and lower insulin costs for seniors, directly contradicting Trump’s statements.
