Stop the Biden-Harris raid on Medicare

Vice President Kamala Harris is touting the Inflation Reduction Act, for which she cast the tiebreaking vote, as a signature achievement of the Biden-Harris Administration. Her proof point: Through the legislation’s government-enforced “negotiations” on ten popular drugs, seniors will pay $1.5 billion less on prescription drugs, but not until 2026.

With sixty-seven million people enrolled in Medicare, $1.5 billion in savings is about 20 bucks a year if averaged across all beneficiaries — an amount dwarfed by the same law’s other provisions. Many are already paying monthly premium increases that are now equal to the annual savings they are waiting for in 2026.

The Inflation Reduction Act raids an estimated $260 billion in reduced Medicare drug spending to pay for unrelated spending, including tax credits for electric vehicles and massive subsidies paid to big health insurers, Obamacare subsidies for illegal immigrants, and other wasteful handouts to wind and solar companies and other corporate friends of the Democratic Party. It is a highly dubious proposition that we can spend that much less on drugs without seniors getting fewer drugs, including less innovative new cures and treatments. Even if it is possible, we should all be able to agree that the money should have been kept in Medicare to shore up its finances or passed on to seniors instead of being spent by politicians.

Older Americans already have their average monthly Medicare Part D premiums skyrocketing 20 percent or more — some near 50 percent in some states. And due to the Inflation Reduction Act, nearly two million seniors could soon be kicked off their current drug plans as providers flee the market in droves. All told, there are now fewer drug plans, options, and benefits to choose from than ever over the last decade. Additionally, big insurers have become even more aggressive with prior authorizations and are warning of new access restrictions to critical treatments.

The Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services was forced to report the Inflation Reduction Act was causing monthly premium costs for two million seniors with standalone Part D plans to increase by 179 percent. Knowing seniors would revolt leading into an election year, the Biden administration is trying to paper over this disaster by creating a three-year “demonstration” project to mask those costs by raiding the Medicare Trust Fund to pay off big insurers with billions in new additional subsidies, estimated at $5 billion per year.

On the one hand, seniors have the potential $1.5 billion in 2026 savings. On the other hand, we have the original $260 billion raid on Medicare as a piggy bank for unrelated spending and the second raid of $15 billion to keep Part D from collapsing before the election (three years times $5 billion).

In fairness, this does not include caps on insulin and some vaccines, many of which were first adopted by the preceding Trump administration. Nor does it count the billions in higher Medicare Part D premiums and inflation-fueled prices for everything older Americans are now paying. However, there is no way those factors balance out in favor of seniors.

The Inflation Reduction Act was not the historic achievement its proponents and the media, like the insurer-funded AARP (which gets paid more than $1.5 billion from UnitedHealth alone every two years), marketed it to America’s seniors. It was and is a massive government spending bill that rewarded spend-happy politicians, gave bureaucrats vast new powers over patients and their doctors, enriched and enlarged a handful of giant corporate health conglomerates, and stuck seniors in Medicare, future retirees, and taxpayers with the bill.

As Vice President, Kamala Harris was sitting in the presiding officer’s chair of the U.S. Senate to cast the tiebreaking vote that allowed the Inflation Reduction Act to pass. And unlike her backflips on many issues, she continues to tout it as an achievement. That leaves it to voters and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to do what she refuses to do: address the legislation’s catastrophic failures.

Phil Kerpen is the president of American Commitment and the author of “Democracy Denied.” Kerpen can be reached at
phil@americancommitment.org.

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