President Biden wants you to believe that his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget will save Medicare, which will be insolvent as early as 2028, without raising costs on seniors or cutting benefits.
If that sounds too good to be true, it\u2019s because it is.
Biden\u2019s plan to \u201csave\u201d Medicare is to raise taxes and subject more drugs to government price controls. The White House boasts that the president\u2019s $6.8 trillion budget proposal will \u201cextend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by at least 25 years.\u201d This band-aid means that anyone under age 35, or more than one-third of the current workforce, will still face Medicare insolvency in their lifetimes.
Even if you take the White House at its word, Biden is clearly kicking the can down the road for the next generations to deal with. This, however, is par for the course for Washington Democrats these days, particularly when it comes to budget issues; call something \u201cfree\u201d and hope you aren\u2019t held accountable when the bill comes due.
Biden\u2019s topline spending numbers also revolve around the false belief that when the government gets involved, prices drop. Rarely, if ever, is this true. The federal government is inherently worse at negotiating drug prices than the private sector; for example, to offset government-set prescription drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act, drug companies raised the prices of nearly 1,000 other medications, proving that the government alone cannot effectively mandate private sector prices.
Any claim that government price negotiations will automatically lead to cost savings must be greeted with skepticism.
Further, any savings that result from this government drug pricing scheme would be more than offset by new entitlement programs that the left is pushing for, meaning none of Biden\u2019s already inflated estimate of $307 billion in savings would be used to stabilize Medicare or given back to the taxpayer.
Instead, the president proposes $252 billion in new taxes, driven by a rise in the Net Investment Income Tax, on America\u2019s family-owned businesses to help subsidize our broken Medicare system.
Seventy five percent of businessowners will face immediate financial setbacks should this plan take place, the same people who fought tooth and nail to keep their doors open during COVID-19 and are still battling high inflation and low labor force participation. Mom and Pop shops, which employ nearly half of the workforce, will inevitably be forced to raise prices, lay off workers, or both to absorb these heightened costs.
It\u2019s a twist of the knife that this administration thrust into the heart of small businesses on day one.
It\u2019s abundantly clear that this administration has no plan other than to tax, borrow and spend. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, so this approach will never work. Frustratingly, the new left appears to be willing to sacrifice anything \u2014 even lives \u2014 if it means growing the federal government\u2019s control over our health care system.
Decreased investment in pharmaceutical research and development has real-world consequences. Patients waiting for a promising new drug trial to alleviate their chronic pain, or even save their life, watched that hope disappear with the flick of Biden\u2019s wrist. You think the president would have learned from this mistake and, at a minimum, prevented any further hope from being dashed from patients.
Instead, when it comes to the Biden administration\u2019s failures, the past is merely prologue.
Decreased investment in pharmaceutical research and development has real-world consequences. Patients waiting for a promising new drug trial to alleviate their chronic pain, or even save their life, watched that hope disappear with the flick of Biden\u2019s wrist. You think the president would have learned from this mistake and, at a minimum, prevented any further hope from being dashed from patients.
Instead, when it comes to the Biden administration\u2019s failures, the past is merely prologue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n