By I & I Editorial Board, Issues & Insights | October 17, 2024
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.
In fact, average monthly premiums for a Part D plan were lower when Donald Trump left office than under Barack Obama.
Harris’ tie-breaking vote has turned this once-successful program upside down.
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.”
The situation is so bad that the Biden-Harris administration doled out $5 billion in borrowed money to insurers in an attempt to mask even more shocking price hikes in an election year.
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.
Once again: higher prices and less competition.
There was one big winner from Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote: government bureaucrats. The Health and Human Services Department got an extra $3 billion and 91 new staff posititons to “take on” Big Pharma.
This is what you get when you put Democrats in charge of anything. Less choice. Higher costs. Bigger government. And an absolute unwillingness to admit that their “solution” has made things worse.
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