Long sought price negotiations. a long time in coming. bill, we started doing this 25, 30 years ago. big pharma doesn t just get a blank check at your expension, the expense of the american people. on my watch, health care is a right, not a privilege in this country. we re going keep standing up to big pharma, and we re not going to back down. [ cheers and applause ] this is part of what is technically called the inflation reduction act from the white house. seniors are supposed to save money, and interestingly, so should the government. there s an independent office, nonpartisan. that s not a biden administration source, and they do these estimates. they project that just going forward with this, standing up the big pharma, could save the feds over $3 billion a year and over $100 billion in ten years.
Straightforward. here is some of how republicans tried to stop this on the way. the american people don t want the government shut down, and they don t want obamacare. coming together to stop obamacare is the essence of pragmatism because it is self-evident this isn t working. their bipartisan bill fails to enact any bipartisan accountability for big pharma. this is a classic example of the government breaking your legs, then calling itself a hero for giing you a crutch. is it, though? i mean, we love allegory around here. we showed you movie clips tonight. but i m not sure lowering the price of subscription drugs while saving taxpayer money is like breaking your legs. you decide. i can t tell you everyone loves every part of obamacare. there are endless debates over these national health care policies in our country, and good people of good faith can
Two or five or 10 million americans but roughly 35 million americans, people who didn t have health insurance up until these changes. it also changed the rules. so something that a lot of people care about, if you ever find someone in your family goes through this, finding they have a preexisting condition, what they use to discriminate against people. a whole other stuff i m not going to list off because we only have so much time wham obamacare did not do is crack big pharma s grip. while some made changes, big, controversial at the time, it didn t break through that barrier, and there are a lot of reasons for that. cutting drug prices is something that many different democratic politicians have talked up, and frankly some sort of less traditional libertarian republicans although not the mainstream republican leaders.