Not Surprising, The Trump Drug Rebate Rule Would Have Saved Seniors Billions!

[Markle]

Not a surprise! Who is making decisions within the Biden administration?​

The Trump Drug Rebate Rule Would Have Saved Seniors Billions; Biden Repealed It and Gave Billions to China EVs​

One of the things we sometimes say to be nice is that Joe Biden cannot possibly be in command of his administration – that it must be rogue actors making these terrible policy decisions for him.

What can’t be denied is that his administration, whether he’s actually in charge of it or not, is abusing American seniors just trying to get their medicine. The cure – as for many of the world’s problems – is to go back to what Donald Trump had already been doing.

This year, premiums are up more than 20 percent for the more than 50 million Americans enrolled in Medicare Part D. In 2025, it’s estimated that premiums could go up another 50 percent! What could actually lower healthcare costs for seniors is if the federal government brings back the Trump Rebate Rule.

In 2020, President Trump announced a policy that provided seniors the chance to capture the rebates that drug manufacturers pay back to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for preferred placement on the insurers’ drug formularies. The rebate was designed to help seniors with very expensive medications. At the time, Trump proposed a concrete plan for helping those seniors, and the total savings could be billions and billions for them.

Trump said the rebate rule “will save American seniors billions of dollars by preventing middlemen — the famous middlemen, they call them — from ripping off Medicare patients with high prescription prices.”

The Trump Drug Rebate Rule Would Have Saved Seniors Billions; Biden Repealed It and Gave Billions to China EVs

This is yet another instance where Democrats will sacrifice the needs of vulnerable Americans on the altar of their Green God.

www.breitbart.com

 

[Greenbeard]

Medicare Patients on Pricey Drugs Are Saving Big This Year | Wall Street Journal

Medicare patients lining up to fill pricey prescriptions at the pharmacy counter this year will realize some good news: For the first time, there is a ceiling on how much they will pay in 2024 for their Part D drugs.

Changes brought about by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act mean that people on Part D plans now pay no more than roughly $3,300 on drugs annually—a number that could shift a bit based on whether they take brand or generic medications. In 2025, that cap will change again to a flat $2,000.

“It will let me take a deep breath,” said Judy Aiken, a 69-year-old retired nurse in Portland, Maine, who last year paid more than $9,000 out of pocket for a drug to treat her psoriatic arthritis, Amgen’s Enbrel. “Frankly, I was delighted.”

Aiken, who relies on Social Security and a pension, said the roughly $6,000 she is likely to save on Enbrel this year will help her pay off bills, turn less to credit cards and maybe even order a pizza from a restaurant instead of making one at home.

Here’s how it works: People who buy drugs through Medicare Part D, the government-funded insurance program that covers most prescription drugs, pay thousands of dollars for their drugs until they reach the so-called catastrophic zone of spending. After that, they had to continue paying 5% of their drugs’ cost for the rest of the year, sometimes adding up to thousands more. This year, that 5% coinsurance was eliminated. Once Medicare patients spend roughly $3,300—the “catastrophic zone” threshold for 2024—they won’t have to pay any more out of pocket for Part D drugs.

Action vs empty rhetoric.