Yuengling Black and Tan cans are stacked in the warehouse of the D.G. Yuengling & Son Brewery Mill Creek plant on Tuesday, July 21, 2020. (Lindsey Shuey/Republican-Herald via AP)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvanians will be able to buy canned alcoholic drinks, called ready-to-drink cocktails, from a wider variety of retailers under legislation approved Thursday.

The state Senate approved the bill, 32-17, and sent it to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s desk.

Under the bill, the approximately 12,000 restaurants, bars, beer distributors, grocery stores and convenience stores that are already licensed to sell alcohol can get a special permit to sell the canned drinks. Under current law, only the state-owned wine and liquor stores are allowed to sell the canned drinks.

The bill restricts the sale of the drinks to before 11 p.m. and to drinks that have a lower alcohol content than 12.5%.

Ready-to-drink canned cocktails have boomed in popularity in recent years. Legislative analysts project the growing sales will bring in about $35 million a year in state revenue by the fiscal year of 2028-2029.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania lawmakers ground through a flurry of votes Thursday to approve a budget deal, nearly two weeks into the new fiscal year after being slowed by disagreements during closed-door negotiations over Democrats’ push for more public schools aid.

The $47.6 billion plan for the fiscal year that started July 1 represents a 6% increase over last year’s approved spending, with most of the new money going toward public schools and human services to boost pay for direct care workers.

The plan also devotes more money to making college more affordable in a state that’s rated as among the worst in the nation in affordability and hundreds of millions to compete for huge new projects like multibillion-dollar microchip plants.

Votes in the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-controlled House began within hours of rank-and-file lawmakers getting their first look at hundreds of pages of budget-related legislation that first became public Thursday.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed the main spending bill late Thursday night after it passed the House 122-80 and the Senate 44-5. Republican opponents attacked it as a bloated and irresponsible budget that would boost debt and spend down surpluses in an aging state facing projections of year-over-year deficits.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia, said the budget reflects a strong moral compass.

“This budget makes one of the most historic investments in what is our most valuable resources, and that is our children,” Harris said.

The plan doesn’t increase sales or income tax rates, the state’s two major revenue sources, although the package carries tax cuts for businesses to deduct more losses and students to deduct loan interest.

It will require about $3 billion of surplus cash to balance, leaving about $10.5 billion in reserve. Shapiro had initially proposed a $48.3 billion plan.

For public schools, the legislation delivers about $900 million more for instruction and special education, about a 9% increase, plus hundreds of millions more in new subsidies for school construction and tuition to private and cyber charter schools.

A substantial portion of the aid, about $526 million, is designed to represent a first step in responding to a court decision that found the state’s system of school funding violates the constitutional rights of students in poorer districts.

For weeks, a behind-the-scenes struggle played out between Republicans and Democrats over how to distribute the money. Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, called the education funding formula “justifiable” and “accountable,” although one critic, Sen. Lindsey Williams, D-Allegheny, said it had been bent by “political whims.”

In any case, the legislation falls well short of the $6.2 billion increase phased in over five years sought for underfunded schools by the districts that sued and won in court. It is also smaller than the $870 million Democrats had pursued as the first step of a seven-year, $5.1 billion increase.

For higher education, the plan devotes an additional $260 million, or about 13% more, with most of the increase headed to the state-owned university system and to the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency to expand grants to students.

Making college more affordable was a focus of Shapiro’s and Republican lawmakers in recent months. Still, the plan gives no increase in aid to Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University to subsidize in-state tuition.

On the human services side, a priority of Shapiro’s, ending a waiting list of thousands of families who need help for an intellectually disabled adult relative, will get an additional $228 million, or 10% more, as the first step in a multiyear plan. That is about half the amount that advocates say is needed to fix a system beset by staffing shortages, low pay and a thousands-long waiting list.

Nursing home operators will get a 7% increase, or $120 million, amid warnings that inadequate Medicaid reimbursements are forcing a growing number of homes to close. Counties will see a $20 million increase for mental health services, far short of the $250 million they had sought for a system they call crumbling and broken.

Shapiro, meanwhile, had sought about $280 million more for public transit systems — about 20% more — that are still struggling to recover ridership from the pandemic. Instead, Republicans agreed to about $80 million.

On economic development, Shapiro has vowed to compete with other states that are pouring billions into subsidies to attract microchip fabrication plants, electric vehicle battery plants and other huge projects. He proposed borrowing $500 million to get large plots of land ready. Lawmakers agreed to borrow $500 million, including $100 million for roads, water and sewer extensions.

FILE – Shelley Duvall poses for photographers at the 30th Cannes Film Festival in France, May 27, 1977. Duvall, whose wide-eyed, winsome presence was a mainstay in the films of Robert Altman and who co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” has died. She was 75. (AP Photo/Jean-Jacques Levy, File)

Shelley Duvall, the intrepid, Texas-born movie star whose wide-eyed, winsome presence was a mainstay in the films of Robert Altman and who co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” has died. She was 75.

Duvall died Thursday in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, her longtime partner, Dan Gilroy, announced. The cause was complications of diabetes, said her friend, the publicist Gary Springer.

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night,” Gilroy said in a statement. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away beautiful Shelley.”

Duvall was attending junior college in Texas when Altman’s crew members, preparing to film “Brewster McCloud,” encountered her at a party in Houston in 1970. They introduced her to the director, who cast her in “Brewster McCloud” and made her his protege.

Duvall would go on to appear in Altman films including “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville, “Popeye,” “Three Women” and “McCabe & Ms. Miller.”

“He offers me damn good roles,” Duvall told The New York Times in 1977. “None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him. I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’”

Duvall, gaunt and gawky, was no conventional Hollywood starlet. But she had a beguiling frank manner and exuded a singular naturalism. The film critic Pauline Kael called her the “female Buster Keaton.”

At her peak, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of the 1970s. In “The Shining” (1980), she played Wendy Torrance, who watches in horror as her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), goes crazy while their family is isolated in the Overlook Hotel. It was Duvall’s screaming face that made up half of the film’s most iconic image, along with Jack’s axe coming through the door.

Kubrick, a famous perfectionist, was notoriously hard on Duvall in making “The Shining.” His methods of pushing her through countless takes in the most anguished scenes took a toll on the actor. One scene was reportedly performed in 127 takes. The entire shoot took 13 months. Duvall, in an interview in 1981 with People magazine said she was crying “12 hours a day for weeks on end” during the film’s production.

“I will never give that much again,” said Duvall. “If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me.”

Duvall disappeared from movies almost as quickly as she arrived in them. By the 1990s, she began retiring from acting and retreated from public life.

“How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime, they turn on you?” Duvall told the Times earlier this year. “You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”

Duvall, the oldest of four, was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 7, 1949. Her father, Robert, was a cattle auctioneer before working in law and her mother, Bobbie, was a real estate agent.

Duvall was 20 when she met Altman. She was also engaged to the artist Bernard Sampson, whom she married in 1970. They divorced four years later. Duvall was in a long-term relationship with the musician Paul Simon in the late ’70s after meeting during the making of Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall.” (Duvall played the rock critic who keeps declaring things “transplendent.”) She also dated Ringo Starr. During the making of the 1990 Disney Channel movie “Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Duvall met the musician Dan Gilroy, of the group Breakfast Club, who she remained with until her death.

Duvall’s run in the 1970s was remarkably versatile. In the rugged Western “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), she played the mail-order bride Ida. She was a groupie in “Nashville” (1975) and Olive Oyl, opposite Robin Williams, in “Popeye” (1980). In “3 Women,” co-starring Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, Duvall played Millie Lammoreaux, a Palm Springs health spa worker, and won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the 1980s, Duvall produced and hosted a number of children’s TV series, among them “Faerie Tale Theatre,” “Tall Tales & Legends” and “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories.”

Duvall moved back to Texas in the mid-1990s. Around 2002, after making the comedy “Manna from Heaven,” she retreated from Hollywood completely. Her whereabouts became a favorite topic of internet sleuths. A favorite but incorrect theory was that it was residual trauma from the grueling shoot for “The Shining.” Another was that the damage to her home after the Northridge Earthquake was the last straw.

To those living in Texas Hill Country, where Duvall lived for some 30 years, she was neither in “hiding” nor a recluse; But her circumstances were a mystery to both the media and many of her old Hollywood friends. That changed in 2016, when producers for the Dr. Phil show tracked her down and aired a controversial hourlong interview with her in which she spoke about her mental health issues. “I’m very sick. I need help,” Duvall said on the program, which was widely criticized for being exploitative.

“I found out the kind of person he is the hard way,” Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.

THR journalist Seth Abramovitch wrote at the time that he went on a pilgrimage to find her because, “it didn’t feel right for McGraw’s insensitive sideshow to be the final word on her legacy.”

Duvall attempted to restart her career, dipping her toe in with the indie horror “The Forest Hills” that filmed in 2022 and premiered quietly in early 2023.

“Acting again — it’s so much fun,” Duvall told People at the time. “It enriches your life.”

___

AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr contributed to this report

United States Steel Corporation Research Technology Center in Munhall, Pa., is shown, Thursday, June 27, 2024. Generations of Pittsburghers have worked at steel mills, rooted for the Steelers or ridden the rollercoaster at Kennywood amusement park, giving them a bird’s eye view of the massive smokestacks of Edgar Thomson Works, the region’s last blast furnace. Now, steel town USA’s most storied steel company, U.S. Steel, is on the cusp of being bought by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp. in a deal that is kicking up an election-year political maelstrom across America’s industrial heartland. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagos) 

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Generations of Pittsburghers have worked at steel mills, rooted for the Steelers or ridden the rollercoaster at Kennywood amusement park, giving them a bird’s eye view of the massive Edgar Thomson Works, the region’s last blast furnace.

Now, Steeltown USA’s most storied steel company, U.S. Steel, is on the cusp of being bought by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp. in a deal that’s kicking up an election year political maelstrom across America’s industrial heartland.

The sale comes during a tide of renewed political support for rebuilding America’s manufacturing sector and in the middle of a presidential campaign in which the politically dynamic Pittsburgh region is a destination for President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and their surrogates.

The deal follows a long stretch of protectionist U.S. tariffs that analysts say has helped reinvigorate domestic steel. And it is eliciting complicated feelings in a region where steel is largely a thing of the past after people, particularly those 50 or older, watched mills shut down and their Rust Belt towns wither.

“The fear is that these jobs went away once, and the fear is that these jobs could go away again,” said Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic campaign consultant whose grandfather lost his steel mill job 40 years ago.

U.S. Steel is no longer a major steelmaker in an industry dominated by the Chinese. But its workers still carry political heft in what some see as a larger symbolic fight to save what’s left of manufacturing in the United States.

With the United Steelworkers against the deal, Biden — a Democrat who has made his support for organized labor explicit and has won the union’s endorsement — has all but vowed to block U.S. Steel’s sale, saying in an April rally with steelworkers in Pittsburgh that the company “should remain totally American.”

Trump, a Republican who as president opposed union organizing efforts but describes himself as pro-worker, has said he would block it “instantaneously.”

Biden’s White House has indicated the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States will review the transaction for national security concerns. The committee can recommend that the president block a transaction, and federal law gives the president that power.

In the meantime, the Department of Justice is reviewing it for antitrust compliance, and the steelworkers union has filed a grievance over it.

In a rare flurry of bipartisan unity, the sale has drawn opposition from Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio and from Republican Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, on both economic and national security grounds.

Nippon Steel has scheduled the deal to close later this year.

Once the world’s largest corporation, U.S. Steel was the world’s 27th-largest steelmaker in 2023, according to World Steel Association figures. It reported just under $900 million in net income on $16 billion in sales last year.

The deal includes all of U.S. Steel’s ore mining, coking, steelmaking and processing plants around the country, including the Edgar Thomson Works, which looms over the Monongahela River just south of Pittsburgh and still churns out steel slabs 150 years after it was built. U.S. Steel employs 3,000 people at its four major Pennsylvania plants, including the Edgar Thomson and the nation’s largest coke-making plant in nearby Clairton.

Nippon Steel — the world’s fourth-largest steelmaker in 2023, according to association figures — and U.S. Steel are now in the midst of a broad public relations effort to promote the sale.

Their ads are on social media, TV screens and billboards, as the companies promise to protect jobs, move Nippon Steel’s U.S. headquarters to Pittsburgh from Houston and invest in the badly aging Pittsburgh-area plants to make them cleaner and more efficient.

Flyers landing in Pittsburgh-area mailboxes tout the “future of American steel” and urge residents to contact their elected officials to support the companies’ “partnership.”

And, they say, “U.S. Steel remains U.S. Steel.”

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is a changed place.

It is no longer a destination for new steel investment. Gone are the 20 or so miles (32 kilometers) of contiguous iron and steel mills from downtown Pittsburgh and up the Monongahela River that helped the U.S. industrialize and wage wars.

Now, Pittsburgh is seen as an “eds and meds” city in which universities and hospitals are the major employers.

Allegheny County, which surrounds Pittsburgh, just began growing again, after decades of population decline. Some city neighborhoods have emerged from a long period of struggle and are thriving, and a younger generation is attracted to the city’s growing high-tech industry.

Younger residents or transplants don’t necessarily want steelworkers to lose jobs, but they care about the environment, too. Local elections are increasingly elevating insurgent progressives who take a dim view of fossil fuels and heavy industries — such as U.S. Steel’s plants — that use them.

Edith Abeyta, an artist and California transplant who lives near Edgar Thomson Works, keeps an air monitor at her house to check daily for air quality.

For her, Edgar Thomson Works is a massive eyesore and a health threat.

“Not every place you go smells like rotten eggs or burning metal or you see big plumes of red smoke or black smoke or flares that are burning all night long,” Abeyta said. “Not everybody lives with that.”

Steelworkers have changed too.

The union still endorses Democrats, but rank-and-file blue-collar union members, like the steelworkers, are no longer viewed as a bedrock of the Democratic Party’s coalition, in part because of shrinking union numbers but also because there were defections to Republicans. In 2016, Trump became the first Republican to win Rust Belt states Michigan and Pennsylvania since 1988.

Christopher Briem, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research, estimated there are 5,000 steel mill jobs in the region, a tiny percentage of the number of mill jobs when steelmaking there was at its peak. He puts the region’s competitive steelmaking peak in the 1920s, before technological advances rendered the region’s metallurgical coal unnecessary for steelmaking and gave rise to electric arc furnaces that don’t require coal.

And while Pittsburgh has recovered from the collapse of steel, some smaller neighboring towns haven’t.

“And that’s what got people so concerned, is the fact that we’ve been through this before and it changed the region and it devastated people’s lives,” said August Carlino, president and chief executive officer of the Rivers of Steel Heritage Corporation, based in Homestead.

Tony Buba, a filmmaker who lives near the Edgar Thomson plant and whose father worked for 44 years at a steel mill, sees a misplaced nostalgia around Pittsburgh’s steel industry.

Mill jobs were dangerous work that didn’t pay decent wages until shortly before steel’s collapse in the early 1980s, he said. “Sirens would go off when someone got hurt, and mother would start praying,” he said.

Regardless of who owns them, Buba expects that Pittsburgh’s steel plants will be gone in 30 or 40 years — and that political support will be fleeting.

“It’ll be interesting to see after the election,” Buba said, “how many people are opposed to the sale.”

Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published July 11, 2024 1:39 P.M.

(Aliquippa, Pa) GetBlock Farms LLC’s final design for an Aliquippa development plan was approved by the city’s planning commission recently. The 2 parcels are in the  area on Franklin Avenue next to BF Jones Memorial Library. Council gave their approval at Wednesday night’s meeting.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – A resident of Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of  securities fraud, United States Attorney Eric G. Olshan announced today. 

Frank T. Poerio, Jr., 62, pleaded guilty to four counts before United States District Judge Marilyn  J. Horan. 

In connection with the guilty plea, the Court was advised that Poerio used sensitive, material non public information (MNPI) obtained from a Dick’s Sporting Goods (Dick’s) employee to engage in 160 trades of the company’s securities on the New York Stock Exchange. These transactions included the  purchase of individual shares and call option contracts and occurred between August 2019 and May 2021, when the insider worked in a data analytics role at the company’s corporate offices in Moon Township,  Pennsylvania. The trades netted approximately $823,000 in profits for Poerio, who often spoke with the  employee about finances and investing. Several of the trading incidents occurred in the days immediately  preceding Dick’s release of periodic earnings statements—so called “blackout” periods, when Dick’s  employees were prohibited from trading in the company’s securities. 

“Frank Poerio admitted to gaming the system by using material non-public information from a  company employee to conduct well more than a hundred trades over the course of several years that resulted  in nearly a million dollars in profit,” said U.S. Attorney Olshan. “Our office is dedicated to working with  our law enforcement partners and fellow agencies to protect the integrity of our public trading systems and  ensure that anyone who cheats those systems to score easy profits is held accountable under the law.” 

“Insider trading erodes the foundation of our economy and undermines public trust in our  institutions. This is not simply a casual, petty crime,” said FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Kevin  Rojek. “The FBI will persistently pursue those who believe they can abuse their position to unfairly reap  financial gains at the expense of others. The FBI and our partners remain vigilant in fighting for fairness  and integrity in our financial system.” 

Judge Horan scheduled sentencing for October 31, 2024. At each count, the defendant faces a  maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, a $5 million fine, or both. Under the federal Sentencing  Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed would be based upon the seriousness of the offenses and the prior  criminal history, if any, of the defendant, among other factors. 

Assistant United States Attorney Gregory C. Melucci is prosecuting this case on behalf of the  government. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the investigation that led to the prosecution of  Poerio. 

FILE – A Chicago Transit Authority electric bus charges at Navy Pier Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, in Chicago. The Biden administration is awarding nearly $2 billion in grants to help restart or expand electric vehicle manufacturing and assembly sites in eight states, including the presidential battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Grants totaling $1.7 billion will be issued by the Energy Department to create or retain thousands of union jobs and support auto-based communities that have long driven the U.S. economy, the White House said Thursday, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is awarding nearly $2 billion in grants to General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and other carmakers to help restart or expand electric vehicle manufacturing and assembly sites in eight states, including the presidential battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The Energy Department will issue grants totaling $1.7 billion to create or retain thousands of union jobs and support auto-based communities that have long driven the U.S. economy, the White House said Thursday. Besides the three battleground states, grants also will go to EV facilities in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland and Virginia.

The grants cover a broad range of the automotive supply chain, including parts for electric motorcycles and school buses, hybrid powertrains, heavy-duty commercial truck batteries and electric SUVs, the White House said.

“Building a clean energy economy can and should be a win-win for union autoworkers and automakers,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more — from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia — by helping auto companies retool, reboot and rehire in the same factories and communities.”

GM said Thursday that its $500 million federal grant will help the company convert an assembly plant in Lansing, Michigan to produce EVs. GM has already announced over $12 billion in investments in its North American EV manufacturing and supply chain since 2020. That investment and the federal grant “underscore our commitment to U.S. leadership in manufacturing and innovation,″ said Camilo Ballesty, GM vice president of North America Manufacturing and Labor Relations.

The grants, paid for by the landmark 2022 climate law, will help deliver on his commitment to ensure the future of the auto industry is made in America by American union workers, Biden said.

“Workers that were left behind by my predecessor are now making a comeback with the support of my policies, including the conversion grants my administration is announcing today,” the Democratic president said.

The grant announcement comes as Biden rejects calls to step aside after a disastrous debate performance last month. Biden, 81, has acknowledged his poor performance but has brushed it off as a “bad night,” even as many congressional Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have declined to give him a full vote of confidence.

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has maintained a tight grip on the Republican party, even after becoming the first former president to be convicted of a felony.

The grants announced Thursday come after a federal competition that included four times as many applicants as grant recipients, the Energy Department said. Officials declined to identify companies that unsuccessfully applied for grants, but said all projects that were awarded funding currently employ Americans working in union jobs in the U.S.

“There is nothing harder to a manufacturing community than to lose jobs to foreign competition and a changing industry,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor. Even as competitors like China invest heavily in electric vehicles, the federal grants will help “ensure that our automotive industry stays competitive — and does it in the communities and with the workforce that have supported the auto industry for generations,” Granholm said.

The new grants complement $177 billion in private sector investment in EV and battery manufacturing since Biden took office, Granholm and other officials said.

Awards are subject to negotiations to ensure that commitments to workers and communities are met, officials said. The Energy Department also will complete environmental reviews before money is awarded later this year.

If awards are completed as planned, the selected projects would create more than 2,900 jobs and help ensure that about 15,000 union workers are retained across all 11 facilities, the White House said. The grants come after successful union organizing drives from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Fort Valley, Georgia, the White House said.

“The president will not take his foot off the pedal when it comes to supporting the U.S. auto industry,” said White House national economic adviser Lael Brainard.

Transportation accounts for the single largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution and Biden has made electric vehicles a key part of his climate agenda.

“Not only are we delivering new sources of clean transit — that iconic yellow school bus going green — but we’re also delivering to the American people options to save … thousands of dollars of fuel and maintenance costs over the lifetime of a vehicle” by going electric, White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said.

Companies slated for awards include Blue Bird Body Co., which will receive nearly $80 million to convert a Georgia site previously used to make diesel-powered motor homes to produce electric school buses. Fiat Chrysler will receive nearly $335 million to convert an idled assembly plant in Illinois to assemble electric vehicles, and $250 million in a separate grant to convert an Indiana transmission plant to make electric drive modules for EVs.

Harley-Davidson will receive $89 million to expand a facility in York, Pennsylvania to make electric motorcycles, and Volvo Group will receive $208 million to upgrade three manufacturing facilities that supply and build Mack and Volvo-branded heavy-duty trucks. The plants are located in Macungie, Pennsylvania; Dublin, Virginia; and Hagerstown, Maryland.

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, and Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) introduced the Capping Prescription Costs Act, which would lower prescription drug costs for millions of Americans. The bill would place annual caps on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs­­—$2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families. Casey’s bill builds on the success of the Inflation Reduction Act, which capped prescription drug cost-sharing for Medicare Part D beneficiaries, extending the savings to the commercial health care market.

“Prescription drug costs are like a bag of rocks tied around the necks of millions of Americans, weighing them down every single day,” said Chairman Casey. “My new bill will place a cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Americans with private insurance, building on the success of the Inflation Reduction Act and lightening the load that has been weighing down Americans for far too long.”

“Long before I came to the U.S. Senate, I was fighting to make health care more affordable and accessible. Struggling families shouldn’t have to skip refills, ration prescriptions, and risk their health just to afford the medications they need to survive,” said Senator Reverend Warnock. “In a nation as rich and powerful as the United States that should never be the case, so I’m proud to join Senator Casey to introduce the Capping Prescription Costs Act that will help families afford the prescriptions they need to live healthy, full, independent lives.”

Over 60 percent of American adults take at least one prescription drug, with 25 percent of adults taking four or more. Yet Americans often pay more for the same prescription drugs than people in other countries, and due to the cost burden, American patients often cannot afford their medications as prescribed. This results in patients skipping doses, cutting doses in half, or taking over-the-counter medications instead of their prescriptions. One study found that 31 percent of patients did not take their medications as prescribed due to cost.

Chairman Casey has long been a leader in the Senate’s efforts to bring down prescription drug costs. In August 2022, Casey fought to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to lower health care and prescription drug costs for older adults, people with disabilities, and families across the Nation. Starting in January 2023, the IRA capped the cost of insulin for Medicare Part D beneficiaries at $35 a month for certain covered insulin products. The law also will limit Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 per year beginning in 2025.

Casey’s new bill will extend that out-of-pocket cost cap to the commercial health care market. The new $2,000 cap on cost-sharing for individuals and $4,000 for families will apply to all of the 173 million Americans who have private health insurance.