Seniors paying more under the Biden-Harris Administration

By Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks

When I became a doctor and took the Hippocratic Oath, I promised to refrain from causing harm or intentionally hurting people. And when I was elected to office, I promised to fight for and protect the needs of Iowans.

Meanwhile, remember that Democrats promised they would bring down healthcare costs for Americans, especially seniors. Since the Biden-Harris Administration took office, Medicare Part D premiums have skyrocketed, increasing by 57 percent. They are about to go up again, and seniors need to be prepared.

More than 650,000 Iowans depend on Medicare. This year, they had 22 Part D plans to choose from — that’s less than half the number that was available in 2007. Some saw their Medicare Part D premiums — the monthly amount paid for health coverage — increase as much as 119 percent from last year. Nationally, the average increase was 21 percent.

The bad news doesn’t stop there. Premiums are expected to go up by another 50 percent or more in 2025! That means in just a few months, some Iowa seniors, many on a fixed income, will be spending almost $200 a month on healthcare premiums alone.

So, how did a law that was supposed to lower healthcare costs end up causing them to skyrocket? When my Democratic colleagues wrote the inaccurately named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), they moved more than $100 billion out of Medicare, promising that any savings from the law would make up for the loss. But they knew it wasn’t true, so they added gimmicks to distract from the fact that it would be years, maybe never, before Americans saw any real savings. The problem with gimmicks is they don’t solve the problem.

One of those gimmicks is lowering the cost Iowa Medicare beneficiaries pay out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. Next year, the new out-of-pocket maximum for drugs is going from $3,300 down to $2,000.

That sounds great, but someone has to pay for the $1,300 difference. It was supposed to be the insurers, but they are passing the cost onto beneficiaries through higher premiums. Insurers knew the out-of-pocket cap would kick in next year, so they started raising premiums this year.

Another gimmick is a 6 percent limit on premiums. Democrats would have you believe that everyone on Medicare would be protected from double-digit premium increases from insurers, but the reality is that the cap only applies to a portion of the premium related to basic benefits, not the actual premiums plans charge for coverage.

Knowing the political fallout from this flawed approach, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a demonstration to buy down premiums in 2025. They propose to spend billions more from Medicare to cover up their mistake, not to change the law, but to dodge the political hit coming in October when seniors start to shop for plans and see massive premium increases.

Had Democrats simply not raided Medicare in the first place, this new raid on Medicare wouldn’t have been needed. Now, taxpayers will pay billions more for the flawed law’s impact on costs.

One simple solution Congress should enact now is to stop using Medicare as a piggy bank. Those so-called “savings” from the IRA are not going back into the system. Instead, they are being used to fund Democrats’ pet projects like financing a Travis Kelce movie, solar panels, or tax breaks on Chinese-built electric cars.

Iowans deserve better; that’s why I am working to fix the law, end these misappropriations of funds taken out of Medicare, and provide better care and lower costs for seniors in our state.

Correcting this sleight-of-hand maneuver will take time, so Iowa seniors need to prepare right now for October 1. That’s when they will start shopping for their 2025 Medicare plan and could see another increase in costs due to the Inflation Reduction Act.

What we need to do now is ensure that leaders live up to the promise of the Hippocratic Oath and do no harm through another raid on Medicare to fund programs outside of Medicare.