Democrats faced a terrifying reality earlier this year: A cap on patient out-of-pocket costs to limit Medicare drug spending, passed as part of Biden’s signature Inflation Relief Act, was set to raise premiums for million senior citizens just weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

To avoid the political catastrophe of presiding over major premium increases in the midst of a closely contested election, the Biden-Harris administration used its authority to redirect matching funds to subsidize premiums for seniors until after the election.

The administration’s $5 billion budget gimmick kicked the proverbial can, but it only adds to the estimated $20 billion in additional spending over three years to cover the unintended consequences of one of the Biden-Harris administration signatures.

While it frees up Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to deliver on her key economic plan for the middle class, the subsidies will cost taxpayers and seniors in the long run.

“They created a new program that will send billions to health insurance companies … to temporarily offset premium increases,” Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association for Mature American Citizens (AMAC) told him John Solomon reports podcast.

“You can really tell that they’re buying, you know, big insurance companies right before the election. And taxpayers, this is important for people to understand, taxpayers pay the bill today, seniors will pay the price tomorrow,” she added.

Medicare Part D premiums were set to rise in October at the start of open enrollment as a result of pressure on insurance companies from the limits of the Drug Price Inflation Reduction Act — one of the signature legislative initiatives of the Biden-Harris Administration.

This could have been a political disaster for the Democrats and their candidate, who boasted that she cast the tie-breaking vote on the legislation.

But the administration stepped in to prevent catastrophe. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a new premium stabilization program called the demonstration in July. This program would output a total of about 5 billion dollars in subsidies for insurance companies to cover the costs of price caps and other effects of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Before the subsidies, the price cap plan was already set to increase federal spending after the Congressional Budget Office found that the financial impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act were underestimated.

Analysis, demanded by Republican critics of the administration’s plans, said the act’s changes to Medicare would likely drive the new plan’s average bid for standard Part D coverage. to increase by 179% for 2025 without intervention.

“CBO expects that the additional plan costs reflected in these proposals would result in an increase in federal spending of $10 billion to $20 billion in calendar year 2025, compared to our previous projections,” CBO said.

The CBO report:

But the new subsidy would work to counter premium increases at the expense of further increasing the costs of the Inflation Relief Act changes.

The Biden-Harris administration’s motives seemed clear when their plan was announced this summer.

“Biden Admin to Spend Billions to Cut Medicare Drug Premium Increases,” one Politico headline read. “The move to protect some older Americans from higher costs would come just before the election.”

The move drew criticism from Republicans. “One of @POTUS’s domestic accomplishments will cause a significant increase in Medicare premiums for millions of Americans right before the November election,” said Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Md. posted on X. “Now its administrator is preparing to distribute billions of dollars to private insurance companies…”

But Harris faced little scrutiny for the move and continues to campaign, providing the tie-breaking vote that passed the Inflation Relief Act and the price caps it contained. With the premium crisis averted, the subsidy plan freed up Kamala Harris’ campaign to promote her administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs and preserve Medicare.

“Vice President Harris, along with President Biden, took on Big Pharma and won,” Harris Campaign “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class” read. “They reduced out-of-pocket drug costs for millions of seniors by passing the Inflation Relief Act, which allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices with big pharmaceutical companies for the first time and placed a $2,000 cap on all out-of-pocket drugs. expenses.”

Harris’ plan conveniently ignores the growing deficits associated with the Inflationary Reduction Act’s changes to Medicare — a cost that will be borne by future taxpayers — and documents on the administration’s subsidization trick to avoid short-term price increases.

All the while, Harris vowed to “protect Social Security and Medicare against relentless attacks from Donald Trump and his extreme allies” and “strengthen these programs for the long term.”

But experts say seniors have been the real losers of the Biden-Harris administration’s manipulation of Medicare and out-of-control federal spending.

“Seniors were the biggest losers of all from Biden’s inflationary policies because they lost money,” said economist and former Trump adviser Stephen Moore. John Solomon reports podcast.

“Who is the biggest victim of inflation? Well, there’s always people living on a fixed income with lifetime savings, and all of a sudden those lifetime savings are worth 20% less than they were, you know, when Biden came into office, their 401k plans have were hit and bonds didn’t do too well either.” Moore said.

“And then you add to that … they stole money from Medicare, which will only accelerate the date when you know Medicare is running out of money,” he added.