# 237
The Biden administration has opened yet another spigot to spend taxpayer dollars we don’t have on health insurance for yet another group. We know the strategy: Get a program in place and keep expanding it so more and more people are reliant on government for their health care.
The latest step is to give Obamacare coverage to more than 100,000 people in the country under DACA status (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). A previous Obama administration regulation had explicitly excluded these non-citizen residents from being eligible. Undaunted, the Biden administration is redefining via regulation the term “lawfully present” to include DACA, all without consulting Congress.
This is only the latest Biden administration expansion of Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office says we will spend $383 billion more over this decade on ACA subsidies and interest on the borrowed money because of ACA expansions since President Biden took office. This Paragon Pic depicts and explains the dramatic increase.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Democrats expanded the subsidies when they had “unified control of government,” and President Biden wants to make them permanent, “even as the devastating effects of inflation persist and the average deductible for a ‘silver’ level Obamacare plan is more than $5,000.” She says that Congress should instead “prioritize lowering the actual cost of health care.”
And while we are on health spending, the Medicare Trustees issued their latest pronouncement this week, making headlines because the report says Medicare’s Hospital. Trust Fund won’t go bankrupt until 2036. Nothing to worry about now, right?
Hardly. Paragon’s Joe Albanese writes in National Review that “Medicare expenditures now exceed national defense expenditures. The only budget item growing faster than health care is interest payments on existing debt.”
And just as with tax increases, it’s consumers who always pay. “Rising costs for these benefits will also increase the financial burden on Medicare enrollees, because they typically pay about 20 percent of the cost for Part B services. On average, retirees spend about 26 percent of their Social Security checks on Part B and D expenses alone,” he writes.
And part of Medicare’s spending slowdown is because seniors have access to more and better treatments, whichhave contributed to slowing the overall rate of growth in per capita spending. Seniors appear to be having fewer heart attacks and strokes, likely as a result of effective cholesterol and blood pressure medicines.
AEI’s Joe Antos hosted a discussion on Tuesday with Paul Spitalnic, Medicare’s Chief Actuary, with perspective on the report and informative slides. “Because [the Hospital] trust fund automatically receives funds from general revenues, it always remains solvent, yet it drains federal resources and contributes to a larger fiscal problem,” Antos explains.
Joel White of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage says seniors are paying the price for other Biden administration policies through higher premiums for their prescription drug plans.
The mis-named Inflation “Reduction” Act is the culprit. Democrats want to tell voters they are reducing drug costs, but the moves just push “costs back to consumers through higher premiums and tighter management on access to drugs.”
He explains that this year’s Part D premiums “have increased by a crushing 21%, on average. Next year’s prices are expected to be even higher”—as much as 50% higher. “Just as President Biden campaigns on ‘lowering drug costs’ this fall, many seniors’ jaws will drop over sky-high premiums for the prescription drug benefits they need.”
Because of IRA changes, “Part D insurers are aggressively cutting costs by adding more ‘prior authorization’ requirements and pushing patients toward the cheapest therapies first,” White writes.
“None of this damage was necessary. Bipartisan proposals to redesign the drug benefit in a smarter, less disruptive way were proposed—but ignored in the interest of rushing a partisan bill through Congress.
“More than 50 million American seniors are enrolled in Medicare. They were told the Biden administration was improving the drug benefit. They’re now learning the IRA is breaking it.”
AEI’s Brian Miller offers specific policy suggestions in his testimony this week before a House Committee on Small Business hearing on “Stifling Innovation: Examining the Impacts of Regulatory Burdens on Small Businesses in Healthcare.”
Continued medical progress is vital to solving the problems that too many politicians think can be fixed with ever more government spending.
