The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.
President Donald Trump is right: Joe Biden broke Medicare. Under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), seniors and patients pay higher insurance premiums and more out-of-pocket costs for less healthcare coverage. Trump must stop Biden’s midnight Medicare rule before February 1, or it will trigger mandates that could destroy Medicare’s popular Part D program.
Biden was a disaster from his first day in office to the final days of his administration. In a cynical, last-minute move before leaving office, his administration snuck IRA price controls on 15 prescription drugs. This wasn’t about helping seniors. It was about sticking the Trump administration with burdensome regulations before he was sworn in as president. Biden bureaucrats rushed this broken rule, setting up Medicare for failure during Trump’s term. Trump has to freeze implementation by February 1 to stop the damage, or the rule will trigger mandates that make it hard to roll back.
Make no mistake: Biden’s IRA price controls will hurt seniors and many Americans who need these treatments. Like Kamala’s price control proposal during her failed campaign, these price controls are set by bureaucratic mandate and enforced with a 95 percent tax on any company that doesn’t comply. Even the Washington Post recognized how terrible these price controls are: “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. … At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat.”
To make things worse, our government’s giant health bureaucracy hasn’t set up a proper system to manage drug prices or ensure pharmacies are reimbursed correctly. Local pharmacies are already saying they won’t be able to provide medications when the program begins in 2026. According to a survey, over 90 percent of independent pharmacists said they won’t have the resources to handle the changes.
Biden’s IRA already caused Medicare Part D premiums to skyrocket. The IRA lowered the out-of-pocket maximum for seniors from about $3,300 to $2,000 by shifting the responsibility for the $1,300 difference to insurance companies. That sounds great, but insurance companies pass that cost on to consumers through higher premiums and restricted access to prescription drugs. This year, premiums for Medicare Part D are up more than 20 percent for the more than 50 million Americans enrolled. Seniors are paying more, and taxpayers are also on the hook for higher subsidies to these plans. The Congressional Budget Office says the IRA’s drug rules alone will increase Medicare costs by up to $20 billion in 2025.
Thankfully, Trump is just getting started. He has already reversed many of Biden’s disastrous mandates and rules. In his first days back, Trump canceled 78 of Biden’s “unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical” executive orders. He froze spending on IRA programs to protect Americans from these deep state regulations from implementation.
Joe Biden broke Medicare, but Donald Trump can fix it. With Trump’s leadership, premiums can go down, seniors will have more plan options, and Medicare will work better for everyone. Trump can start by freezing Biden’s IRA drug rule before the end of this week.
