by Patsy Writesman
Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger was right to vote against the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – which ironically enough has caused record and historic inflation. According to the Heritage Foundation year-over-year inflation reached a 40-year high at 9%. This hurts everyone, but especially seniors living on fixed incomes.
All Americans are feeling the pinch of the IRA with real spending power declining at rapid rates. According to the U.S. Inflation Calculator $1,000 in 2020 now takes $1,215.33 in 2024 dollars to have the same amount of purchasing power – this is a 21.5% cumulative rate of inflation since President Biden won election. No wonder the American people are suffering over the past four years.
To add insult to injury, the IRA includes prescription drug price controls which according to the Wall Street Journal are leading to fewer cures by causing cuts in research and development spending for new medicines.
Included in the IRA are provisions for the U.S. government to “negotiate” on up to 60 different drug prices over the next few years. However, it’s not really a negotiation. It’s government price fixing.
According to the Journal of American Medical Association it takes between $314 million and $4.46 billion to develop and bring a new drug to market – depending upon the therapeutic area and other factors. Democrats including the Biden-Harris administration’s raid on Medicare through these disastrous policies within the IRA are leading to less research and development which ultimately means less innovative and life-saving cures in the future – which will hurt seniors and ultimately lead to more disease, earlier death and a lower quality of life. And, treatments for smaller populations might never make it to market now because they have totally disincentivized any recouping of costs for research and development – especially for niche drugs.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board gets it right when it says: “‘Beating Big Pharma,’ as Mr. Biden says, may get some cheers, but it won’t improve Medicare’s finances or even necessarily save patients money since prices are already negotiated by insurers. Democrats’ goal is to expand government control over private health markets and generate more money to finance their cradle-to-grave society.”
The Biden-Harris raid on Medicare has diverted more than $260 billion from Medicare “savings” to things including electric vehicle tax credits and subsidies for Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) which actually harm patients by acting as middlemen to drive up prices and harvest any discounts for themselves. PBMs are another issue where our own U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn has been leading the call for reform.
And, according to Politico, Part D plan premiums, the prescription drug coverage part of Medicare, are continuing to skyrocket with new premium numbers to be announced this October.
Congresswoman Harshbarger along with Senator Marsha Blackburn, Senator Bill Hagerty and Congressmen Tim Burchett, Scott Desjarlais, Andy Ogles and John Rose were right to oppose the IRA two years ago and we need all of them to continue fighting for seniors in Tennessee and against misguided policies from an out of touch federal government.
– – –
Patsy Writesman is a nationally recognized health care speaker, consultant and owner of managehealthcarecosts.com.
