Prescription medicine should help people manage illness, protect their independence, and live healthier lives.
It should not force a parent to postpone paying a utility bill. It should not make a senior reduce a medically necessary dose. It should not require a family to compare the cost of medication with groceries, childcare, housing, or transportation.
Yet for many Minnesotans, the pharmacy counter has become another source of financial uncertainty.
Minnesota’s Prescription Drug Price Transparency program reported 943 drugs with price increases requiring disclosure between July 2023 and June 2024. Among newly introduced drugs included in the state’s reporting, the median price was $5,289 for brand-name drugs and $1,256 for generic drugs. These figures do not represent what every patient pays, but they show the scale of the prices moving through the healthcare system.
The consequences are personal.
A working parent may delay filling a prescription until payday. A senior may divide tablets to make a bottle last longer. Someone managing diabetes, heart disease, asthma, arthritis, or another chronic condition may skip treatment because the monthly cost has become impossible to manage.
Abdi Abdulle, an educator, father, and community builder running for Congress, believes no one in Minnesota’s Second District should have to choose between filling a prescription and filling the refrigerator.
His healthcare platform calls for capping prescription drug costs, strengthening the ability of public programs to negotiate prices, limiting out-of-pocket costs for essential medicines, protecting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and expanding access to quality care.
The question is not only whether a medication exists.
The more important question is: can the people who need it afford to take it?
What Affordable Prescriptions Should Mean for Minnesota Families
Prescription affordability is not simply about finding the lowest possible price.
It is about creating a healthcare system where people can follow the treatment recommended by their doctors without placing the rest of their household at risk.
Affordable prescriptions should provide predictability, reasonable out-of-pocket limits, transparent pricing, and access to lower-cost alternatives when they are medically appropriate.
They should also protect people from sudden increases that can turn a manageable monthly expense into a financial emergency.
What prescription affordability means in Abdi Abdulle’s plan:
- Capping the cost of prescription drugs
- Limiting out-of-pocket costs for essential medications
- Strengthening public negotiation of drug prices
- Challenging practices that keep prices artificially high
- Protecting access to affordable, quality healthcare
- Expanding care in rural and underserved communities
These protections matter because prescription costs are connected to every other part of family life.
Medicine is paid for from the same household income used for rent, mortgage payments, food, childcare, fuel, utilities, school expenses, insurance, and emergencies.
When prescription costs rise, families do not receive a separate source of income to cover them.
They are forced to rearrange the rest of their lives.
Who Is Being Left Behind by High Prescription Costs?
1. Seniors Managing Medication on Fixed Incomes
For seniors, prescription affordability is closely connected to independence and dignity.
Many older adults rely on medication to manage chronic conditions, prevent complications, reduce pain, and remain active in their communities.
Prescription use is especially common among this population. National Health Interview Survey data for 2021 and 2022 found that 88.6% of adults aged 65 and older took prescription medication. Despite widespread insurance coverage, 3.6% did not obtain needed medicine because of cost, while 3.4% did not take medicine as prescribed because of cost.
That may mean skipping doses, taking less medicine than prescribed, or delaying a refill.
Each decision can place a senior’s health at greater risk.
The issue is especially important locally. People aged 65 and older account for 17.8% of Dakota County’s population, according to the latest Census Bureau QuickFacts data.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Out-of-pocket limits for essential medications
- Stronger negotiation of prescription prices
- Protection for seniors on fixed incomes
- Affordable access to quality healthcare
- Coverage that does not disappear when it is needed most
Why it matters:
- Retirement income may not increase with medication prices
- Seniors often manage more than one prescription
- Skipping treatment can place health and independence at risk
- Medical expenses can consume money needed for food and housing
- Predictable costs help seniors plan their monthly budgets
Federal changes have already demonstrated the value of clear limits.
In 2026, people with Medicare Part D coverage have an annual out-of-pocket limit of $2,100 for covered prescriptions. Medicare also limits cost sharing for covered insulin, with the monthly amount generally capped at the lowest of $35 or other specified price-based amounts.
These protections are meaningful, but they do not solve every affordability problem.
Not every medication is covered in the same way. Not every person has Medicare. Even an annual limit can remain difficult for someone living on a modest fixed income, particularly when drug expenses arrive early in the year.
Affordable prescriptions should mean that seniors can follow their doctors’ instructions without sacrificing another basic need.
2. Working Parents Balancing Medicine and Family Expenses
Parents manage costs that rarely arrive one at a time.
Rent may be due during the same week as a prescription refill. A child may need medicine while the family is also paying for childcare, groceries, transportation, school supplies, and insurance.
When one parent has a chronic condition, the household may face monthly prescription expenses for years.
A family should not have to decide which bill is allowed to become late because someone needs medication.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Prescription costs that working families can manage
- Protection from sudden out-of-pocket increases
- Affordable coverage for parents and children
- Access to treatment before conditions become emergencies
- Healthcare policies connected to wider family expenses
Why it matters:
- Medical costs come from the same income as childcare and housing
- Parents may postpone their own care to protect their children
- Missed treatment can affect a parent’s ability to work
- A health emergency can destabilise the entire household budget
- Affordable medicine helps families plan beyond the next payday
Parents often place their own needs last.
They may refill a child’s prescription but delay their own. They may continue working through pain or worsening symptoms because they cannot afford both a medical appointment and the medicine that may follow.
A healthcare system should not depend on parents neglecting themselves to keep their families financially stable.
When parents can afford treatment, they are better positioned to work, care for their children, and participate in their communities.
Prescription affordability is therefore not only a healthcare issue.
It is also a family-stability issue.
3. People Taking Less Medicine Because of Cost
A prescription only works when the patient can obtain it and take it as directed.
However, high prices can change medical decisions after a patient leaves the doctor’s office.
Some people wait several days before filling a prescription. Others reduce the dose, skip certain days, or stop treatment when the first bottle is finished.
Among adults aged 18 to 64 who used prescription medication in 2021, 8.2% reported not taking medication as prescribed because of cost. The behaviours measured included skipping doses, taking less medicine, and delaying a prescription refill to save money.
These are not careless decisions.
They are often decisions made by people trying to stretch a limited household budget.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Lower prices at the pharmacy counter
- Limits on the cost of essential medications
- Greater transparency in prescription pricing
- Stronger action against artificially high prices
- Affordable care before health conditions become more serious
Why it matters:
- Delaying medication can allow a condition to worsen
- Reduced doses may not provide the intended treatment
- Patients may be reluctant to tell doctors about cost pressures
- Untreated conditions can interfere with employment and family life
- Preventive treatment is often better than emergency intervention
Patients should not have to redesign their own treatment plans based on what remains in their bank accounts.
Those decisions should be made with qualified healthcare professionals and based on medical need.
An affordable prescription system would help ensure that a doctor’s treatment recommendation remains realistic after the patient reaches the pharmacy.
4. Workers Whose Insurance Still Leaves High Costs
Having health insurance does not always mean that prescriptions are affordable.
A worker may pay a monthly premium and still face a deductible, coinsurance, copayments, formulary restrictions, or higher costs for certain brand-name and specialty medicines.
A medication may be covered but placed on a tier that requires the patient to pay a substantial amount.
Coverage can therefore exist on paper while remaining difficult to use in practice.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Limits on out-of-pocket prescription costs
- Coverage that provides meaningful financial protection
- Greater accountability throughout the pricing system
- Protection for people with pre-existing conditions
- Fair healthcare access for working families
Why it matters:
- Insurance premiums already reduce take-home income
- Deductibles can make early-year prescriptions especially expensive
- Workers may avoid changing jobs because of healthcare concerns
- High medical costs can erase the benefit of a pay increase
- Coverage should make treatment affordable, not merely available
Workers should not be punished for becoming sick.
They should not have to use credit cards for medication after already paying insurance premiums. They should not have to spend hours comparing pharmacy prices for a medicine they need immediately.
Healthcare coverage should provide security.
It should allow people to seek treatment with confidence that following the treatment plan will not create another financial crisis.
5. Rural Residents Facing Cost and Access Barriers
Prescription affordability also depends on whether people can reach the care and pharmacy services they need.
Residents in rural and underserved communities may have fewer nearby clinics, specialists, pharmacies, and public transportation options.
A lower prescription price provides limited help when a patient must travel a considerable distance to obtain the medication, attend follow-up appointments, or meet with the provider who can renew it.
Transportation costs and time away from work can become part of the true cost of treatment.
Abdi Abdulle’s healthcare platform includes expanding access to care in rural and underserved parts of Minnesota’s Second District where providers may be limited. It also treats mental healthcare as an essential part of healthcare rather than a separate concern.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Better healthcare access in underserved communities
- Affordable prescriptions regardless of ZIP code
- Protection for local and community-based care
- Greater access to mental health services
- Healthcare policies that recognise transportation barriers
Why it matters:
- A long trip adds fuel and travel expenses
- Limited pharmacy options may reduce price competition
- Time away from work can mean lost wages
- Delayed appointments can also delay prescriptions
- Rural residents deserve the same standard of care as urban residents
Affordability cannot be measured only by the price printed on a receipt.
It must also consider whether patients can reasonably reach the services that allow them to obtain and safely continue their medication.
Where someone lives should not determine whether treatment remains accessible.
6. Families Facing Expensive Specialty and Brand-Name Drugs
Some prescriptions cost far more than the medications most people purchase regularly.
Specialty medicines may be used to treat cancer, autoimmune conditions, blood disorders, diabetes, and other serious or complex illnesses. Even when insurance covers part of the cost, coinsurance can leave patients responsible for an amount they cannot manage.
Families facing serious illness are already carrying emotional pressure.
They should not also have to become experts in formularies, manufacturer programs, appeals, discounts, and payment plans simply to access treatment.
Minnesota’s prescription drug transparency reporting illustrates the difference between prices for newly introduced brand-name and generic medicines. The state reported a median price of $5,289 for new brand-name drugs compared with $1,256 for new generic drugs in the relevant reporting period.
What Abdi Abdulle is fighting for:
- Public negotiation of high prescription prices
- Out-of-pocket protections for essential treatment
- Action against practices that inflate medication costs
- Transparent information about prescription pricing
- Affordable access regardless of medical complexity
Why it matters:
- Serious illnesses can require long-term treatment
- Specialty-drug coinsurance can be difficult to predict
- Families may exhaust savings while managing a diagnosis
- Patients should not be priced away from effective treatment
- Medical innovation has limited value when people cannot access it
The ability to develop new treatment is important.
So is the ability of patients to receive it.
A healthcare system cannot measure success only by the number of medications approved or treatments developed. It must also ask whether those treatments are reaching the people whose lives depend on them.
More Than a Pharmacy Bill: How Prescription Costs Affect Daily Life
Prescription costs are often discussed as one category of healthcare spending.
Families experience them differently.
They experience whether the refill is due before or after payday. They experience whether the medicine requires a separate appointment. They experience whether the insurance company covers the prescribed version or requires a substitution.
They experience the conversation at the kitchen table about which expense can wait.
How high prescription costs spread through a household:
- Medication expenses reduce money available for groceries
- Parents may delay their own healthcare
- Seniors may cut spending on heating or transportation
- Workers may take additional hours while managing illness
- Families may depend on credit cards for recurring treatment
- Savings intended for emergencies may be gradually depleted
The effect is not limited to finances.
There is also the stress of knowing that a missed refill may affect someone’s health. There is the fear of an insurance change. There is the frustration of discovering that the cost has increased without a clear explanation.
For people managing chronic conditions, that pressure may return every month.
Affordable prescriptions give households more than financial relief.
They provide predictability.
They allow patients to focus on recovery and disease management rather than repeatedly searching for a way to pay for the next refill.
That is why prescription affordability must be treated as a family issue, a senior issue, a workforce issue, and a community issue.
Why Abdi Abdulle’s Healthcare Plan Focuses on Affordability
Healthcare proposals often focus on access without fully addressing cost.
A patient may technically have access to a doctor, insurance plan, or prescription. But that access is incomplete when the person cannot afford to use it.
Abdi Abdulle’s plan begins with a direct commitment to cap prescription drug costs and protect access to affordable, quality healthcare for every family.
His platform supports strengthening public programs’ ability to negotiate drug prices, limiting out-of-pocket expenses for essential medication, and challenging practices that keep prices artificially high.
Recent federal changes demonstrate that direct action can reduce costs.
Negotiated prices for the first 10 drugs selected under the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program took effect on January 1, 2026. CMS originally projected that Medicare beneficiaries would collectively save approximately $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs from these negotiated prices during 2026.
What sets Abdi Abdulle’s approach apart:
- It treats prescription affordability as part of family stability
- It focuses on out-of-pocket costs experienced by patients
- It supports stronger public negotiation of drug prices
- It connects medication access with rural healthcare access
- It protects people with pre-existing conditions
- It recognises mental health treatment as healthcare
Price negotiation and out-of-pocket limits are not abstract policy tools.
They determine what happens when a patient presents a prescription at the pharmacy.
They can determine whether the person fills it immediately, postpones it, or leaves without it.
Abdi’s position comes down to a simple standard: healthcare should be judged by whether families can receive necessary care without being financially ruined.
Who Should Minnesota’s Prescription System Work For?
It should work for the senior managing several medications on a fixed monthly income.
It should work for the parent who needs treatment while raising children and paying for childcare.
It should work for the worker who has insurance but still faces an unaffordable deductible.
It should work for the rural resident travelling a significant distance to reach a clinic or pharmacy.
It should work for the person managing diabetes, asthma, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, depression, anxiety, or another condition requiring continuing treatment.
It should work for families who have done everything responsibly but remain one diagnosis away from financial instability.
Prescription medicine will always involve research, manufacturing, distribution, professional care, and legitimate costs.
But the system should not produce a situation where essential treatment is available only to people with the greatest ability to absorb those costs.
Patients should not be treated as the final source of unlimited payment.
Minnesota families deserve a prescription system built around health, access, transparency, and fairness.
Final Thoughts
A prescription is not an optional purchase when someone’s health depends on it.
It may control blood pressure, regulate blood sugar, reduce the risk of a blood clot, treat an infection, manage pain, stabilise mental health, or slow the progression of a serious disease.
Yet the value of that medicine disappears when the patient cannot afford to obtain it.
Minnesota has already seen hundreds of drugs with reportable price increases within a single reporting period. Nationally, cost continues to cause working-age adults and seniors to delay prescriptions, skip doses, or take less medicine than directed.
Those statistics represent real decisions.
For a parent, it may mean waiting until the next paycheck.
For a senior, it may mean cutting another household expense.
For a worker, it may mean continuing through worsening symptoms.
For a family facing serious illness, it may mean watching savings disappear while trying to protect someone they love.
What Abdi Abdulle’s prescription affordability plan comes down to:
- Capping the cost of prescription drugs
- Limiting out-of-pocket costs for essential medicines
- Strengthening public negotiation of drug prices
- Protecting affordable healthcare coverage
- Defending people with pre-existing conditions
- Expanding care in rural and underserved communities
Minnesota families should not have to choose between medicine and food.
Seniors should not have to choose between a refill and a utility payment.
Workers should not have to choose between managing their health and protecting their household budgets.
Abdi Abdulle is running to make healthcare serve the people who depend on it.
Because medicine should help people live healthier lives.
It should not make those lives less financially secure.
FAQs
What is Abdi Abdulle’s position on prescription drug costs?
Abdi Abdulle supports capping prescription drug costs, limiting out-of-pocket expenses for essential medicines, strengthening public negotiation of drug prices, and challenging practices that keep medication prices artificially high. His healthcare plan also protects access to affordable coverage and care.
Why do affordable prescriptions matter for seniors?
Many seniors take multiple prescriptions while living on fixed or limited incomes. National data for 2021 and 2022 found that 88.6% of adults aged 65 and older used prescription medication. Some seniors still reported not obtaining medicine or not taking it as prescribed because of cost.
What is the Medicare prescription out-of-pocket limit in 2026?
For 2026, people with Medicare Part D coverage generally enter catastrophic coverage after reaching $2,100 in out-of-pocket spending on covered prescriptions. Once they reach the limit, they do not pay additional out-of-pocket costs for covered Part D drugs for the rest of the calendar year.
How can high drug costs affect working families?
High prescription expenses reduce the income available for housing, groceries, childcare, transportation, utilities, and savings. Parents may delay their own treatment, use credit to purchase medicine, or postpone other necessary expenses.
Does having insurance guarantee affordable prescriptions?
No. Insured patients may still face deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, formulary restrictions, or high specialty-drug costs. Meaningful coverage should reduce the amount patients pay, not simply confirm that a medication is technically included in a plan.
How does Abdi Abdulle’s plan support rural communities?
His healthcare platform calls for expanding access to affordable, quality care in rural and underserved areas where clinics and healthcare providers may be limited. It also recognises mental health services as an essential part of healthcare.
Where can Minnesotans find help reducing prescription costs?
The Minnesota Board on Aging provides a free prescription drug assistance service through Minnesota Aging Pathways. The program helps Minnesotans of different ages and income levels identify assistance programs and complete applications.