Although Kamala Harris continues to spout false claims that former President Donald Trump wants to cut Medicare funding, the vice president herself cast the tie-breaking vote on Democrats’ scheme to siphon more than $200 billion away from Medicare to fund the left’s “Green New Deal” fantasies. As Trump and other conservatives continue to hammer this point, it could become a major vulnerability for Harris – particularly with high-propensity senior voters – in the final weeks of the campaign.
In 2022, in her role as President of the Senate, Harris broke a 50-50 deadlock in the upper chamber on the egregiously misnamed the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), which President Joe Biden signed into law. That bill effectively makes gigantic cuts to Medicare to provide lucrative subsidies and handouts to Democrats’ allies in the “green” energy industry.
Thomas Phillipson, an economist at the University of Chicago and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, estimates that the IRA will result in $237 billion in cuts to Medicare by 2031. “The Inflation Reduction Act’s poorly conceived government price-setting will disrupt access to medicines for millions of Medicare patients with diabetes, cancer, atrial fibrillation, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases,” he warns. “The law’s price controls are likely to raise annual out-of-pocket costs for 3.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who take price-controlled medicines.”
Among the outrageous provisions this Medicare cut has gone to pay for is a $7,500 in tax credit for well-off Americans purchasing electric cars—the average cost of which is more than $56,000.
As Joe Grogan, a former advisor to President Trump, put it in piece for Real Clear Policy, “Biden cut benefits from people with a median income of $36,000 per year to subsize cars purchased by individuals who earn five times as much” – amounting to a $240 billion “raid on Medicare.” Moreover, Grogan adds, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this from Democrats. The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – cut at least $450 billion from Medicare.
Trump himself is also now hitting the disastrous consequences of the IRA for seniors on the campaign trail – and tying Harris directly to the policy. “As vice president, Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to cut Medicare by $273 billion dollars,” the former president said during a rally in July.
Nonetheless, Harris has continued to celebrate the IRA, touting it during a recent campaign stop by bragging that, “we are dropping trillions of dollars on the streets of America right now.”
Along with a litany of Green New Deal policies, the IRA also contained a Medicare drug price fixing scheme that threatened major tax increases on manufacturers and distributors who refused to bow to the government’s wishes.
While the White House promised that the changes would lower costs for patients, the exact opposite has occurred. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), Medicare prescription drug plan premiums increased by more than 20 percent in the year after the IRA became law.
Harris desperately needs to perform well among high-propensity senior voters for Democrats to have any hopes of holding the White House this fall. But raising prescription drug costs as a result of a far-left Democrat spending package falsely labeled as “inflation reducing” is unlikely to win her much support among that demographic.
Moreover, as AMAC Newsline has previously reported, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are about to be hit with cuts for the second consecutive year after the Biden-Harris administration again reduced base payments.
In total, more than 31 million Americans receive benefits through Medicare Advantage plans, which are particularly important for middle- and low-income seniors. Not only will Medicare Advantage recipients see their funding drop, but they will also be required to provide more documentation to receive any financial support – likely leading to a decrease in healthcare access and patient choice.
More than half of Medicare Advantage enrollees live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, and they save about $2,400 per year compared to traditional Medicare. As The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board has pointed out, “Medicare Advantage plans send notices of annual plan changes in the autumn—a few weeks before the November election. Seniors may be in for a rude cost and benefit shock when they try to renew. If seniors like their doctor, they might not be able to keep her.”
Harris, meanwhile, has continued Biden’s strategy of falsely accusing President Trump of wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security – even drawing a rare rebuke from CNN for false and misleading statements.
For his part, Trump has pledged to not touch Social Security and Medicare. The former president has also floated ending taxes on Social Security – another policy which may go a long way toward earning the all-important senior vote.
While Harris can fearmonger all she wants by openly lying about Trump’s Social Security and Medicare agenda, she can’t erase the past or run from her own voting history. That may well prove to be too much for her to overcome this November.
This article previously appeared at AMAC.US