Tag Archives: Medicare Part D

Using Taxpayer Money To Create The Illusion Of Fiscal Responsibility

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article about a change in Medicare law included in the Inflation Reduction Act and the consequences of that change.

The article reports:

We have no doubt that, in the years to come, the media will describe the Biden-Harris administration as “scandal-free.” But that’s only because for the past four years they’ve vigorously ignored any and all scandals.

Case in point is the $15 billion giveaway that Biden-Harris snuck through this summer without a single hearing, vote, or advance notice, in an attempt to buy seniors’ votes. Followed up by a campaign email to these same seniors on behalf of Kamala Harris, also paid for by taxpayers.

Is any of this legal? Who cares, if it helps Harris win in November? At least, that’s how the mainstream press is treating this scandal.

The article explains:

The criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” that Joe Biden signed on Aug. 16, 2022, after Harris cast the tie-breaking vote, including among its many horrid provisions, several that affected Medicare Part D – the drug benefit for seniors – is set to go into effect in 2025.

Biden and now Harris have been running around claiming that this was a tremendous deal for seniors, except those provisions added huge costs to these drug plans that were going to jack up monthly premiums for this benefit by an average of $110 – a 179% increase!

So, to avoid that, the administration conjured up a “demonstration project” whereby insurance companies would agree to hold monthly premium increases to $35 or less in exchange for a pile of cash.

The Congressional Budget Office figures this will cost $5 billion a year – in borrowed money – plus another $2 billion a year in added interest costs on the national debt.

Critics have pointed out that this wasn’t a “demonstration project,” normally understood as a small-scale effort to test a change in rules governing a program. Instead, it was a subsidy handed out to every insurance company offering Part D plans.

So basically, all Americans are paying for seniors’ Part D Medicare so that the public won’t know that the cost went up. Well, I just told them.

The Health and Human Services sent out a letter touting the Medicare changes.

This is a part of that letter:

“I want to make sure you’re aware of the historic changes to Medicare that are lowering health care costs,” it begins, that are “a result of the Inflation Reduction Act that I signed into law and that Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to secure.” It goes on to say that “these are just some of the ways my administration has worked to help you save money on your health care costs.”

(No mention is made of the $15 billion they’re planning to spend to make budget-shattering premium increases.)

The letter is flagrant electioneering, paid for by taxpayers, and in clear violation of the Hatch Act, which outlaws the use of federal staff or resources “for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

Last week, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel saying that the email “was entirely political in both its purpose and language,” and “has been described as ‘a sales pitch for Kamala Harris.’”

Don’t look for this story in the mainstream media.

Another Consequence Of The “Inflation Reduction Act”

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The Inflation Reduction Act was bad news. It did pretty much everything except reduce inflation. Now it is becoming clear that the law is going to have a very negative impact on the cost of Medicare Part D for senior citizens.

Issues & Insights reports:

Go to Kamala Harris’ campaign website and among the very short list of alleged achievements is this: “She cast the deciding vote to lower drug prices and cap insulin prices for our seniors.”

The only problem is that drug costs for seniors have skyrocketed since Harris signed that bill.

Harris is pointing to the criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which got zero Republican votes, and which was supposed to lower the cost of prescription drugs by giving, as Harris puts it, “Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices with Big Pharma.”

When George W. Bush established Medicare Part D, he let private insurers negotiate with drug companies over prices and then compete for seniors’ business. The result was a program that cost both seniors and taxpayers far less than government bureaucrats had expected, offered seniors a wide range of options, and had premiums that barely budged for more than a decade.

…Seniors next year will face premiums that are 57% higher, on average, than they were in 2021.

“Seniors in some states face even bigger hits to their wallets,” finds a state-by-state analysis done by the Heritage Foundation. “Under the Biden-Harris administration, Medicare drug plan premiums jumped by more than 90% in 10 states. Premiums more than doubled in three of those states (California, 122%; New York, 116%; and Nevada, 104%).”

And the number of plans offered has been cut in half. Which means less competition, which in turn will fuel further price hikes.

As the Congressional Budget Office noted in a recent report, premiums are shooting up “in part because the Part D redesign led to higher costs for those plans.”

…Here’s how the leftist news site Politico put it:

One of President Joe Biden’s signature domestic achievements is set to cause a significant spike in Medicare premiums for millions of Americans just ahead of the November election. Now, his administration is preparing to dole out billions of dollars to private insurance companies to blunt the impact of the increase.

The jump in premiums is a consequence of efforts to reduce what older Americans pay for prescription drugs, part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Insurance companies are on the hook for what patients used to pay and are raising drug plan premiums to make up the difference.

This isn’t a “signature domestic achievement.” It’s a scandal of epic proportions. And it gets worse.

Two months ago, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers issued a statement noting that not only is the “Inflation Reduction Act” costing seniors, it has led to a 35% increase in the cost of new drugs and the cancellation of three dozen research programs by pharmaceutical companies.

Vice-President Harris was the deciding vote on The Inflation Reduction Act–she broke the tie.

Hiding The Increased Cost Of Medicare Premiums Caused By The Passage Of The Inflation Reduction Act

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The Inflation Reduction Act did a lot of things. One of the things it did not do was reduce inflation. We are now finding out that it will cause a significant increase in the cost of Medicare Insurance.

On Wednesday, Fox News posted an article about the use of taxpayer money to delay the increases until after the election.

The article explains:

In a move critics say is designed to shield the Biden-Harris administration from election fallout, the administration has leveraged taxpayer funds to mask upcoming increases in Medicare premiums.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was intended to cap out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries, insurers are poised to significantly hike monthly premiums, with average bids for Part D plans expected to triple by 2025.

In response to potential voter backlash, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rolled out a three-year “demonstration project” to subsidize these premiums, aiming to keep them artificially low. However, despite the appearance of relief, some critics are saying that taxpayers will fund a dramatic increase in subsidies — from $30 per recipient per month in 2024 to $142.70 in 2025 — raising concerns about the long-term impact on government spending and debt. 

The article notes:

Research published by Fidelity, an investment research group, shows that a 65-year-old retiring today can expect to spend $165,000 on health care in retirement, a 5% increase from last year and more than double the estimate from 2002.

Yet, there appears to be a disconnect for many Americans between the actual projected cost of health care in retirement and how much they expect to spend on those expenses. The average American thinks they will spend about $75,000 on health care and other medical expenses, less than half of Fidelity’s calculation, according to the research.

The estimate assumes that an individual is enrolled in Medicare – including Part A and Part B, which cover most hospital care and doctor’s visits – and Part D, which covers prescription drugs. Other expenses such as Medicare premiums, over-the-counter medications, dental and vision care and other costs typically not covered by Medicare are “left to retirees to manage on their own,” the report said.

As of April 2024, about 67.3 million Americans were enrolled in Medicare, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Of those, about half were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, while about 80% were covered by Medicare Part D.

“They just want to get through the election,” Grogan (former President Trump advisor Joe Grogan) said. “They’re hoping after the election they can face it, but its gonna need to be dealt with in the next 12–18 months. They did not believe it would be this bad and its only gonna get worse.” 

Medicine was much more efficient and much cheaper before the government got involved. It is time to let medicine become a free-market part of the economy. More competition will provide more care at a more reasonable price for everyone.

 

 

Agreement On Something From Both Sides Of The Political Spectrum

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It’s rare when the right and left agree on anything. It is really rare when publications on the far right and the far left agree, but that has happened on the issue of rationing drugs for the elderly. This article is based on articles in The American Spectator and The Huffington Post.

The American Spectator reports:

Buried beneath the avalanche of recent news reports about the latest Obamacare-mandated funding cuts to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program is a related but far more disturbing story — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken a major step toward rationing medications to the elderly. Since passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, seniors enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug program have been guaranteed access to “all or substantially all” of the drugs in several classes of pharmaceuticals. President Obama’s health care bureaucrats, however, have proposed removing three of these classes from the “protected” list.

The Huffington Post reports:

A proposed rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would make significant changes to the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. In short, the rule change affects what are known as the “protected classes” of pharmaceuticals under Part D — classes of drugs in which, under current law, coverage must be provided for “substantially all” medicines. The logic in maintaining these protected classes is inarguable. Medicare beneficiaries coping with serious, chronic illnesses should have access to the medications that they and their physicians have deemed the most effective treatment for their conditions.

Medications are not interchangeable. One drug can have vastly different effects, and side effects, on different patients. Thus, Medicare Part D is structured to ensure that patients who require antidepressants, antipsychotics and immunosuppressants (critical drugs for patients who have undergone organ transplants) have access to the unique medicines they need to protect their lives and health.

…The best way to make Medicare more cost-efficient is to help patients better manage their chronic illnesses and avoid long hospitalizations and expensive acute care episodes. The CMS proposed rule change will do just the opposite. Restricting access to the medicines patients need to manage depression, avoid organ transplant rejection, and treat psychosis will drive healthcare utilization in far more costly ways. That’s a betrayal of Medicare’s promise of access to care for our most vulnerable, older Americans.

The Obama Administration seems to forget that senior citizens vote. Senior citizens also pay attention. ObamaCare may have been passed with the support of the AARP, lulling seniors into a false belief that the it would not be harmful to them, but many seniors are waking up to the fact that serious cuts to Medicare are part of the President’s plan for ObamaCare. Senior citizens and Americans have been lied to about ObamaCare. It is time to repeal it and start over.

 

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