If there were ever a modern-day equivalent to the Trojan Horse, it would be former President Joe Biden’s absurdly named Inflation Reduction Act. As the name suggests, the bill was sold as a measure to reduce inflation. Yet once passed and embedded in the heart of our fiscal system, it revealed itself to be a bloated, inflation-driving, pork barrel handout that exploded inflation from within.
In an interview with PBS, a left-leaning Harvard University Economist asserted that he couldn’t “think of any mechanism by which (the IRA) would have brought down inflation to date.”
Among the many problems with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was that it expanded subsidies for green energy programs while attacking Medicare Part D plans. Research shows that the impact of Biden’s plan disproportionately caused inflation for senior citizens on Medicare Part D. These elder Americans should not have been the victim of Biden’s effort to force changes to energy policy in the United States.
A recent study by the American Action Forum exposes the shortcomings of the IRA. The study concluded that “the implementation of the Part D redesign was bungled, threatening higher premiums, dramatic formulary changes, and fewer Part D plans; the subsequent bailout by a demonstration program undercuts the original intent.”
They concluded that the “IRA is a dramatically failed Medicare policy.” Despite a few positive reforms, most of the changes need reform “to restore the integrity of the original Part D program design.” In short, Part D cannot be saved unless the IRA is repealed.
Medicare Part D was created in 2003 and implemented in 2006 to allow private insurance plans to provide drug benefits. Ever since then, it has been under attack from liberals who want a single-payer socialist system. The opposition by liberals to this popular program comes from opposition to private market forces being used to set drug prices. The plan empowers seniors to make their own choices on paying for prescription drugs with plans subsidized by manufacturers and pharmacies. Despite the plan’s effectiveness, progressives and left-wing politicians have pushed hard to hamstring it whenever they have the opportunity.
The IRA was one attempt to change the program by imposing more government price fixing on prescription drugs. The Medicare reform was sold to reduce the cost of drugs for seniors, yet the numbers prove that Biden’s promise was broken.
The American Action Forum found that there are 15 million people not enrolled in Medicare pharmacy benefits, and another 19 million have no prescriptions to fill. Add in another 8 million who are enrolled in a low-income subsidy population who are already protected and the 22 million who spend less than $2,000 per year. You end up with a Biden reform that purports to help 5.6 out of 65 million beneficiaries.
This is clearly a flawed program that has been tested and failed.
The provision of a law that allows high taxes to be imposed on drug manufacturers provides a concerning precedent for using the threat of high taxes to enforce a regulation. This terrible precedent should be opposed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
During the reconciliation budget process, there is an excellent opportunity to repeal the IRA that was passed using an expedited reconciliation budget process during the Biden years. The study found that the promised savings for seniors “were much smaller than advertised,” providing more ammunition for full repeal.
One argument that may be deployed is the Congressional Budget Office score for a repeal of the price-fixing scheme in the IRA, yet if the spending on green energy programs and tax credits for clean energy is repealed with the price-fixing scheme, “$488 billion in energy spending and credits that consume(s) all the Medicare savings of $266 billion.” The purported Medicare savings are used to pay for massive energy spending and tax credits.
In effect, Biden crippled Medicare Part D to fund a radical environmental agenda.
After Trump won in 2024, multiple outlets reported that Biden aides and bureaucrats were doing everything in their power to distribute and lock in the energy spending before Trump could stop it. One bureaucrat referred to it as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.” Unfortunately for senior citizens, those gold bars that got chucked over the side were their affordable health insurance.
Republicans have an opportunity to repeal one of the most destructive pieces of legislation pushed through Congress on a party-line vote. In hindsight, the Inflation Reduction Act did nothing to stop inflation, yet it was a means to massively increase government spending on green energy programs while sabotaging the Medicare Part D program. Now is the time for a complete repeal.
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