For many Wisconsin families, Harris’s plans to address prescription drug costs could be life changing.

Penni Klein used to have to ration the insulin she needs to control her diabetes. But no longer –  not since her medication bills dropped from $685 to $70 a month, thanks to an act of Congress, led by the Biden-Harris Administration. 

“That was half a mortgage,” said Klein, a 62-year-old retiree who lives in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. “I didn’t have the money to make all the ends meet.”

She credits the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 and took effect last year, with shrinking the price of her insulin from $500 to $35 a month and an inhaler she uses for a heart condition from $185 to $35 a month. 

The price cuts are helping 58,965 Wisconsin Medicare beneficiaries who depend on insulin to treat their diabetes and who would otherwise have to pay costs above the cap, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Medicare recipients now pay no more than $35 a month – down from a nationwide average of $54 a month – for the drug they need to survive. And starting in 2025, nearly 1 million Wisconsinites enrolled in Medicare Part D will pay no more than $2,000 a year for any prescription drugs.

In Wisconsin, and throughout the U.S., the soaring price of insulin and other prescription drugs had forced folks to make painful choices. Now it’s easier. 

Klein uses some of the more than $7,000 a year she’s saving to pay for physical therapy that has helped her stay mobile and active. 

“I’m still here,” said Klein, who worked for the state for 32 years, retired in 2018 as Middleton’s public lands recreation and forestry director and had a park named after her. “God is cheering me on.”

Americans had been paying almost three times more for prescription drugs than people in 32 other countries until the Inflation Reduction Act capped the costs.

Before the act kicked in last year, Klein’s drug costs drained her pension. But she considers herself lucky because she does have a pension. 

“Imagine those people who have nothing,” she said. “We just kill off a lot of people really fast that way. And it’s not the rich people. It’s the poor people.”

“Thank God for people like (Wisconsin) Senator Tammy Baldwin, Biden and Harris. If it weren’t for them, I’d still be paying $685 a month,” she said. “I call that a lifesaver.”

Harris had pledged to work toward making permanent the improved tax credits that she says are lowering health care premiums by an average of about $800 a year for millions of Americans; extending the $35 cap on insulin and $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending to all Americans—something currently provided to seniors on Medicare because of the Inflation Reduction Act; accelerating the ability of Medicare to negotiate for bulk pricing with big pharmaceutical companies; canceling more medical debt; and putting pressure on the final two states — Wisconsin and Arkansas — where Republicans have refused to extend Medicaid coverage to postpartum women from six weeks to 12 months.