Rep. Steil’s votes to keep prescription drug prices high and ties to an extreme budget that raises the Social Security retirement age highlight his true positions
Friday, August 4, 2023
KENOSHA, Wis. – With the August congressional recess underway, Rep. Bryan Steil must know that his record on Medicare and Social Security is deeply unpopular – because he’s doing everything he can to hide it.
Holding listening sessions in Kenosha and Janesville this week, the congressman posted on Twitter multiple times to tout that he was working “to protect Social Security and Medicare,” but his record in Congress shows the truth.
Rep. Steil previously voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which strengthened Medicare benefits by capping insulin costs at $35 per month, allowing Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices, and creating a program that forces big pharmaceutical companies to pay rebates when they increase prices higher than the rate of inflation. Thanks to these reforms, more Wisconsinites are already filling insulin prescriptions.
Steil is also a member of the Republican Study Committee, which recently released an extreme budget proposal that would make major changes to Social Security and Medicare. The budget would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s improvements to Medicare’s prescription drug coverage and jeopardize health care for millions by slashing the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. The budget also includes a provision that raises the Social Security retirement age.
While he tries to distract his constituents from his real record on Social Security and Medicare, Rep. Steil hasn’t said whether he supports the pharmaceutical industry’s legal efforts to stop Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices. He has also failed to support newly-introduced legislation which would extend many of the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug pricing reforms to even more Americans.
“In Congress, Representative Steil has stood in the way of relief for Wisconsin seniors struggling with high prescription drug costs and is part of an extreme group fighting to slash benefits and raise the Social Security retirement age,” said Opportunity Wisconsin Program Director Meghan Roh. “It’s no surprise that he’s running away from these wildly unpopular positions, but he owes his constituents an honest answer about why he is fighting on the side of big pharmaceutical companies instead of for working families and seniors in the 1st Congressional District.”
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