Vice President Joe Biden said President Obama once offered financial support because Biden’s son was dealing with health issues at the time.
Advertisement
“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction”, Obama said. In that speech, Obama touted a budget that would “launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of almost every American by seeking a cure for cancer in our time”.
“Let’s make America the country that cures cancer, once and for all”, Obama said at the State of the Union, earning a round of applause.
At that point, Biden said, Obama offered to cover the medical bills.
Describing in an interview with CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger one of his weekly lunches with Obama, Biden said he told the President he was anxious about caring for Beau’s family without his son’s salary.
Hours before the president’s announcement, a coalition of drugmakers and insurers announced the formation of the Cancer MoonShot 2020, a group with the goal of speeding the development of new approaches to treating cancer.
After leaving office, he suffered from brain cancer and died in June.
“He got up and he said, ‘Don’t sell that house”.
Check out more clips from Biden’s interview here.
“We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world”.
While the president’s address garnered several standing ovations from Democratic lawmakers, Obama’s Republican critics suggested the president was ill-prepared to face the threats facing the nation.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the conversation was indicative of the strong relationship the two have built.
Biden has met over the past few months with almost 200 of the world’s top cancer physicians, researchers and philanthropists.
Advertisement
On Friday, Biden will visit the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine to talk to American experts.
