A big announcement widely expected to come on Thursday should tell us a lot about one of the Biden administrations most important policy achievements: a reform with the potential to touch the lives of millions of seniors, alter the pharmaceutical market and, just maybe, affect the November elections as well.

The Department of Health and Human Services is about to publish the final prices for 10 prescription drugs that Medicare covers, following negotiations between the federal government and the pharmaceutical manufacturers. The drugs include expensive, widely used blood thinners and diabetes treatments, as well as a cancer therapy medication.

Such negotiations are routine in most other economically advanced countries its the way their governments set drug prices but they have never before taken place in the U.S. Thats changing this year thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act , which Democrats passed on a party-line vote and President Joe Biden signed into law last year.

Under the law, the annual, yearlong negotiation process ends with the publication of the new prices by Sept. 1. And while the administration has not said publicly exactly when it plans to publish the new prices, the White House has announced that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are appearing together in Maryland on Thursday to discuss the progress they are making to lower costs for the American people.

As Politico reported late last week and sources familiar with planning have since confirmed to HuffPost, the purpose of the joint appearance is to tout the new prices, following some kind of announcement before markets open on Thursday morning.

Thursdays appearance is a White House event, not a campaign stop. But its safe to assume that in the lead-up to the November election, Harris and her fellow Democrats will continue to talk about these new prices while hailing plans (including those in the latest Biden-Harris budget proposal) for extending and strengthening the governments new negotiation power.

Democrats, especially more liberal Democrats, have traditionally championed giving the government direct leverage over drug prices. The drug industry has opposed that idea, as have most Republicans.

Whether any of this shapes voter perceptions in the fall would depend on getting them to notice and pay attention to the new negotiating process now underway. So far, thats been difficult for Biden, Harris and their allies to do. Polling has shown that a large number of Americans are unaware that the federal government has already started to shape drug prices, although the vast majority of Americans support the idea .

A Big Change Thats Hard To See

One reason for the low public awareness may be that the negotiating power is quite limited. The new prices apply only to Medicare and not private insurance for non-elderly, non-disabled Americans. And the negotiations cover only a limited set of drugs, starting with the 10 medications this year.

Also, the new prices wont actually take effect until Jan. 1, 2026. How much the new prices will then save individual seniors as opposed to the Medicare program as a whole will depend on whether seniors actually take those drugs as well as which variety of Medicare drug coverage they have.

Even figuring out the magnitude of the likely savings could be difficult, or at least take some time. The newly negotiated prices for these 10 drugs are going to be much lower than the official list prices, but Medicare insurers already get discounts on those prices for their customers. And those discounts are proprietary information.

But there are ways to estimate the impact of newly negotiated prices for example, by comparing them to publicly available industry averages and indexes. The administration may publish some of those as part of Thursdays announcement.