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This week, hundreds of prominent elected Democrats — including my opponent, Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev. — are gathering in Chicago to officially nominate Kamala Harris as their party's presidential nominee.
In speech after speech, they'll tout one of their proudest achievements, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), bringing special attention to the price controls the law imposes on prescription drugs covered under Medicare.
In fact, President Biden and Vice President Harris just celebrated the release of the final prices for the first 10 price-controlled drugs at a joint appearance late last week.
But Democrats' redesign of Medicare is about to blow up in their faces.
At this very moment, the Biden-Harris administration is scrambling to finalize a more than $10 billion bailout for insurance companies to avoid an "October surprise" that would result in enormous Medicare premium hikes for seniors.
That's right. In mid-October, seniors were going to realize the full wreckage of the IRA.
The Biden-Harris administration admitted that the national average monthly bid amount for Medicare's prescription drug benefit, Part D, was increasing from about $64 in 2024 to nearly $180 in 2025.
That spike would have likely resulted in premiums nearly tripling for seniors next year as they were already struggling to afford gas, rent, and groceries due to the worst bout of inflation in decades.
In an attempt to delay these politically inconvenient premium hikes until after the election, Democrats created a new, multi-billion-dollar program to bailout insurers and essentially "buy down" skyrocketing premiums.
It's a cynical act of political deception meant to forestall seniors' justifiable wrath at the ballot box in November.
But the premium increases shouldn't have caught the administration by surprise.
The IRA's consequences have been clear for months, and they go far beyond premiums.
Even before the upcoming hike, Medicare Part D premiums had surged by 21% this year. Millions of plan members also face imminent increases in out-of-pocket costs.
As insurers feel new financial pressures from the law, they continue reducing patients' plan options. Nearly 100 standalone Part D plans were withdrawn from the market in 2024.
That leaves beneficiaries with roughly half as many choices as seniors had in 2006, when Medicare launched the Part D program.
The IRA is also forcing insurers to increase their use of prior authorization and step therapy — two tactics that minimize their own spending by restricting patients' treatment options against doctors' wishes.
An estimated 80% of physicians have noticed an uptick in the use of prior authorization over the last few years. Meanwhile, the usage of step therapy has spiked.
Even more alarming is the IRA's impact on medical innovation: 36 research programs and 21 drugs have already been discontinued in the two years since the IRA's passage.
Looking ahead, projections suggest the IRA's price controls could result in 139 fewer drug releases by 2035 — a severe blow to medical progress and patient health.
Adding insult to injury, the Democrats are using the purported "savings" from price controls to fund green energy subsidies and other left-wing pet projects.
One of the biggest recipients of the IRA's Green New Deal subsidies happens to be a major Democratic donor. Tens of millions of dollars in grant funding has been funneled to anti-American groups like the pro-Hamas Climate Justice Alliance.
Kamala Harris and other top Democrats may try to tout the IRA in Chicago, but they have no reason to be proud. The policy has been an abject failure.
Drew Johnson is a budget and healthcare policy expert who has served as a scholar at several leading free market think tanks. He is currently the Republican nominee for Nevada’s 3rd congressional district. Read Drew Johnson's Reports — More Here.
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