SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
inflation reduction act
Advocates Urge Biden to 'Secure His Climate Legacy' by Acting on LNG Before Trump Takes Office
"The clock is ticking—for the Biden administration and our planet," one campaigner asserted.
Nov 07, 2024
With just 75 days left before climate-denying Republican President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House to pursue his "Drill, Baby, Drill" energy agenda, clean energy advocates in the United States on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to take "bold action" to move toward a fossil fuel phaseout and a sustainable future for the world's people and the planet they all share.
"Although millions of Americans voted to reject Trump's dangerous agenda, we face another four years of a Trump presidency," said Oil Change International executive director Elizabeth Bast. "Trump has promised to double down on oil and gas production, accelerating climate catastrophe while continuing to enable violence against vulnerable communities—from environmental defenders to Palestinians facing genocide. His policies will compound environmental racism and human rights abuses, with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and frontline communities in the U.S. and around the world bearing the heaviest burden."
"Movements for change have won important victories under the toughest conditions," Bast added. "It would take more than a Trump presidency to change that. Every pipeline, every fossil fuel export terminal, and every fracking well we can stop matters."
To that end, Oil Change International U.S. program manager Collin Rees asserted that "in his final months in office, President Biden has the opportunity to secure his climate legacy by taking bold action to phase out fossil fuels and protect our climate and communities."
"We are calling on Biden to immediately end fossil fuel expansion, make permanent his January pause on new [liquefied natural gas] exports, shut down the disastrous Dakota Access Pipeline, and fulfill the U.S.' commitment to stop financing international fossil fuel projects," he continued.
Looking forward to this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29)—which is set to begin next week in Baku, the capital of petrostate Azerbaijan—Rees said that "Biden must seize his final moment at COP29 in Azerbaijan this November to cement real climate action before Trump takes office."
"After pledging to move away from fossil fuels at COP28, Biden needs to deliver by championing a bold new $1 trillion annual climate finance package and putting forth a plan for a fast, fair, forever, funded, fossil fuel phaseout," he argued. "This funding will transform last year's fossil fuel promises into genuine support for adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage—but only if Biden acts now."
"The clock is ticking—for the Biden administration and our planet," Rees stressed. "What Biden does now will determine whether he'll be remembered as the leader who did his utmost to limit the Trump administration's damage and keep the world from hurtling towards climate chaos."
Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media echoed the demand, calling on Biden to "make a mountain of progress for Trump to try to undo."
Bloombergreported Thursday that the Biden administration is "racing" to complete a study examining the climate, economic, and national security implications of increased LNG exports. While Trump has vowed to end Biden's LNG export pause on his first day in office, any adverse findings in the study could be used to launch legal challenges to the new administration's project approvals.
Despite campaign promises to take bold climate action—including by banning new fossil fuel drilling on public lands—Biden oversaw the approval of more new permits for drilling on public land during his first two years in office than Trump did in 2017 and 2018.
During Biden's tenure, the United States became the
world's leading LNG exporter. The president has overseen what climate defenders have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than the European Union's combined greenhouse gas footprint.
The Biden administration has also held fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and has approved the highly controversial Willow project and Mountain Valley Pipelinedespite warnings from climate scientists that continued fossil fuel extraction has no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating and meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
On a positive note, the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by Biden contains unprecedented investments in the clean energy sector, including solar, wind, and battery storage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Harris' Cap on Drug Costs Would Save Americans Billions of Dollars
"Vice President Harris is working to bring relief to patients who are struggling to afford to care for themselves as part of her bigger plan to lower drug costs," said Public Citizen's co-president.
Nov 01, 2024
As Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to "terminate" a 2022 law that cut prescription costs for seniors, his Democratic opponent in next week's election, Vice President Kamala Harris, is pushing for an expansion of the policy that could save Americans billions of dollars, according to research released Friday.
Two years ago, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), capping annual out-of-pocket costs for patients with Medicare Part D; it's currently around $3,500 but set to drop to $2,000 next year. The Biden White House's budget for fiscal year 2025 and the Harris campaign have both advocated for extending that cap to people with private health insurance.
The government watchdog group Public Citizen found that if implemented in 2022, "a $2,000 annual cap would have reached more than 900,000 patients with private insurance, saving them a total of $2.78 billion, equating to over $3,000 in savings per patient."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement Friday that "no one should ever have to choose between taking their medicine and putting food on the table."
"Vice President Harris is working to bring relief to patients who are struggling to afford to care for themselves as part of her bigger plan to lower drug costs," he continued. "This proposed cap must work in tandem with a bigger, bolder congressional effort to stop pharmaceutical companies from price gouging treatments. We cannot let Big Pharma continue to take advantage of American patients and put more strain on our healthcare system."
"We cannot let Big Pharma continue to take advantage of American patients and put more strain on our healthcare system."
Based on Public Citizen's analysis of data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for 2022, if the IRA had featured a $1,000 annual cap, 4.1 million Medicare enrollees would have collectively saved $4.53 billion, or an average of almost $1,100, while nearly 2.7 million patients with private insurance would have saved $4.38 billion, or over $1,600 each.
If the IRA had gone even further with a $200 annual cap, the group found, more than 18 million Medicare enrollees would have saved a total of $11.42 billion, or over $600 each, while nearly 21 million of those with private insurance would have saved $10.55 billion, or more than $500 per patient.
Such savings could significantly improve patients' lives, Public Citizen argued, pointing out that "due to the high costs of prescription drugs, nearly a third of Americans do not take medications as prescribed. This includes cutting pills in half, skipping doses, not filling a prescription, or taking over-the-counter drugs instead of filling a prescription due to cost barriers."
"The imperative of lowering costs for patients to improve adherence and relieve financial stress is clear, but unless OOP cost caps are passed alongside policies to lower the prices drug corporations charge for medicines, they risk shifting costs onto other patients through higher premiums as well as other healthcare payers," the report warns. "The federal government could provide relief, but without reducing prices, taxpayers would be left on the hook."
As an example of a bill that Harris and Democrats could pursue if they win the White House and Congress next week, Public Citizen highlighted a Congressional Budget Office estimate that "the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act would lower spending by more than $450 billion over 10 years, compared to the $101 billion in savings it projected for drug price reforms passed through the Inflation Reduction Act."
"That legislation, which was passed unanimously by House Democrats, went further than reforms included in the Inflation Reduction Act by using international reference pricing, increasing the number of drugs negotiated each year, expanding negotiation eligibility (including by allowing negotiations for expensive medicines without delay periods), and providing access to negotiated prices in private insurance," the group noted.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier this week, drug companies are already battling the IRA's drug cost policies—including allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of some commonly used medications—in court while raking in massive profits.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Healthcare Policies Nearly Killed Me. We Are Not Going Back
We will not go back to the terror that 135 million Americans with preexisting conditions felt in 2017 under the first year of Trump's rule, knowing that we could lose access to care at any moment.
Nov 01, 2024
Today is Michigan. Yesterday was Wisconsin. Tomorrow is Ohio. I’ve been traveling on the road with Protect Our Care on a big blue bus for six weeks with an important message. The Affordable Care Act saved my life, and we're not going back.
Back in 2017, I walked into a doctor's office with a cough, and walked out with a cancer diagnosis. I thought I was a healthy 40-year-old small-business owner, but was stunned to learn I had stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. Thankfully my insurance covered the treatments that have me in remission today.
White-knuckle days of chemotherapy and nights of after effects for a grueling six months, then many weeks of radiation followed. Surviving and recovering should have been my sole focus. But instead I had to drag myself through treatments, then to rallies and press conferences: begging former U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress not to strip away the insurance I needed to save my life.
Nearly a decade after Donald Trump promised us a healthcare plan, he only has "concepts of a plan". Neither doctors nor hospitals accept concepts in lieu of payment.
The day after my first chemotherapy session, while I was on the couch trying not to die, MAGA Republicans in the U.S. House egged on by Trump voted to repeal Obamacare. And then threw a party to celebrate.
We cannot go back.
So we're rolling forward on the Care Force One bus: traveling the country and sharing our healthcare stories, and coming to a city near you in these final days.
We will not go back to the terror that 135 million Americans with preexisting conditions felt in 2017 under the first year of Trump's rule, knowing that we could lose access to care at any moment without the protections of the ACA. Will we not go back to annual or lifetime limits on care. Being denied an insurance policy because of our past medical history. Kids under 26 relying on insurance through their parents' plans could lose it. Over 10 million of us (including me) had insurance directly through the health insurance marketplace. And over 15 million of us had insurance through Medicaid expansion in our states—also a part of the ACA.
Since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, America has made further healthcare advances—including the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 solely thanks to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats in Congress. This law caps insulin copays for people on Medicare at $35 a month, provides subsidies for health insurance for middle class families, and finally allows Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices.
Checking the news every morning back during Trump's first term led to a sense of dread at whatever cruel back-of-the-envelope plan that Trump or Republicans would produce that day. These "plans" never expanded our healthcare or made it better, just threw vulnerable Americans to the wolves to pay for tax breaks to rich people. We cannot go back to that chaos and terror.
Nearly a decade after Donald Trump promised us a healthcare plan, he only has "concepts of a plan". Neither doctors nor hospitals accept concepts in lieu of payment.
His running mate JD Vance spilled the beans: The "concepts" include letting insurers cover only young and healthy people, and sending everyone else back to high-risk pools, which were notoriously underfunded and unable to protect people who need it most. And now Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promises "No Obamacare."
It's like they don't understand the basic idea of insurance: everybody in one risk pool together, so that costs don't spiral out of control for the people who need it. If you stop covering people as soon as they get sick, of course insurance gets cheaper. This is like only offering blizzard damage insurance to Floridians, or hurricane damage insurance to Midwesterners–it's missing the entire point.
Republicans want to repeal and replace the Inflation Reduction Act now too.
We've seen the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 healthcare agenda, and it's not pretty. In the absence of plans of his own, will Trump and the entire Republican party just follow their playbook? That's what it was designed for, a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president starting on Day 1.
Whereas the Kamala Harris healthcare agenda would build on the gains of the Affordable Care Act and Inflation Reduction Act. Her administration would expand health coverage to more Americans, and lower drug prices for everyone.
We know what the candidates want to do and who their priorities are for. The choice is yours to make this fall: do we go forward, or do we go back?
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular