The Biden Administration in its almost fours year of office have been known to do some questionable things and use some different ways to shift money around to get what they want. Whether it be legal or not. Biden of course was part of the Obama Administration, which introduced Medicare for people, in an effort to bring down healthcare costs. It has pretty much done the opposite, but that is a topic for another article.
The administration is at it once again with their crafty maneuverings, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are both accused now of using taxpayer funds to mask some huge Medicare premium hikes as the election draws closer. Because it is part of their platform, any hit to Medicare would be a devastating blow, so they are running with a desperate play to keep the costs down.
Robert Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation says this is a result of the good old Inflation Reduction Act from a few years ago, which included a price capping on drugs. It has left insurers scrambling to recover costs.
"They are moving hundreds of millions of dollars from another part of Medicare to artificially subsidize down premiums ahead of the election," he says.
Before seniors were even told about potential hikes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) unveiled a 'demonstration project,' or a $5 billion, three-year plan to impose year over year increase limits of $35 on premiums, also increasing payments to insurers.
Ultimately, this will end up hiking up costs on senior citizens, and give them fewer healthcare options, as a two-for-one punch to the gut. They just keep driving home their fiction that the free market will change how capitalism works, which is just not coming to fruition.
Their Affordable Care Act is just the latest example, bringing insurance companies into the fold of unaffordability, and no option to increase costs. Basically, we just have one big game of whack-a-mole: where one problem arises, you bash it down, and another pops up.
"They really pushed down hard with the Affordable Care Act and have ever since been trying to hide the consequences of the policy," he says. "Youa re just paying for it in more ways...people will just keep paying more and getting less."
They keep doing things, and trying to put out fires, by doing more bad things. That is a recipe for disaster they have been leading us down for years, and we keep spiraling further down.
"More of a bad thing does not ever make it good...the concepts of the Affordable Care Act are flawed, and always have been flawed," he says.
Henneke says the solution tot he problem is fairly simple. We need to allow people to opt-out of Oabamacare, and give control of federal healthcare dollars back to the states to control.
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