Fact check: Trump falsely claims Biden didn’t lower Americans’ insulin costs

Washington CNN —

President Joe Biden is campaigning on his success in getting seniors with diabetes a $35-per-month cap on their insulin spending. But his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, claimed Saturday that Biden has actually done nothing to lower insulin costs and that Biden is taking credit for Trump’s own accomplishment.

“Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it,” Trump wrote on social media. “It was all done long before he so sadly entered office. All he does is try to take credit for things done by others, in this case, ME!”

Facts First: Trump’s claims that Biden did nothing to lower insulin costs and “it was all done” before Biden became president are both false. Trump did get a $35-per-month cap on insulin for some seniors, through a voluntary program that Medicare prescription drug plans could choose to participate in. But Biden ensured that all 3.4 million-plus insulin users on Medicare got $35-per-month insulin — through a mandatory cap that not only covers more people than Trump’s voluntary cap but also applies to a greater number of insulin products and stays in effect at a level of individual drug spending at which Trump’s cap disappeared.

Trump could fairly say he played a role in lowering insulin costs and that Biden does not deserve sole credit. The Biden-era federal government has acknowledged that Biden’s mandatory $35 monthly cap, signed into law in his Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, “closely aligns with” the voluntary $35 monthly cap in the Trump-created program that was announced in 2020 and launched in the final month of the Trump presidency in 2021.

But