Letter to the editor: Diabetic seniors need help now, not in 2026

In the Inflation Reduction Act, a section was included for Medicare to negotiate prescription prices for diabetics. What senior citizens don’t realize is that, if you read the fine print, those negotiations will not take effect until 2026, which the administration has failed to point out to the general public. Seniors need to be made aware of this.

I am a diabetic who was excited about this until I looked into it because my co-pays for Ozempic are extremely high under Medicare, and I am not eligible to receive assistance because I am not under the 400% poverty level with my income. They set these guidelines without taking into consideration what a person’s other expenses are.

If President Biden really cared about negotiating prescription prices to lower costs for senior citizens, he would have made this effective much sooner than 2026. It seems to me that he doesn’t care about senior citizen diabetics and threw that into the Inflation Reduction Act just to get it passed in hopes of votes for the midterms.

Gina Buzzard

Wilkinsburg