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With the midterms less than a month away, Donald Trump has once again announced a financial giveaway. The latest beneficiaries are more than 20 million seniors, who the president said will receive one-time payments worth $90 to help cover their Medicare Part B premiums.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post that the funds would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, for which Congress allocated roughly $2 billion to improve the Medicare fee-for-service program.
The Medicare Improvement Fund was established in 2008, no administration has ever actually tapped it or used it to make payments, a White House fact sheet explained. President Trump described the account as a “pointless ‘Slush Fund’” that Democrats had used “to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.” While the president may have embellished the situation a bit, as is tradition, he’s certainly not entirely wrong.
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See, the Democrats previously raided the fund to offset costs associated with Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), effectively obfuscating the true cost of Obamacare. Here’s what happened: Congress had parked around $20 billion in the fund for future spending, but when the Democrats passed the ACA, they canceled that future funding authority. The Congressional Budget Office counted it as a savings, making the price tag of Obamacare appear lower than it actually was.
So not only has Congress failed to use the fund for its intended purpose, Democrats also used it to make the true cost of their disastrous health care law look better – a law that has since driven up premiums for millions of Americans. “We are finally using this Fund, along with my Most Favored Nations Deals, to substantially LOWER costs for our Seniors,” Trump asserted.
The White House said eligible seniors will either receive the funds as a direct deposit or a check in October. Most people enrolled in Medicare Part B will qualify for the payments, with exceptions for those whose premiums are covered by Medicaid and those who pay an Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount.
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Trump and the Midterm Money Gun
Trump previously announced that the administration is sending $500 refund checks to nearly 1 million Americans who the administration claimed were overcharged for Obamacare. Then there’s the president’s promise of $5,000 for every American citizen – including children – if the GOP maintains control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
The president has repeatedly touted the strength of the economy, but his growing list of financial giveaways suggests he may be taking Americans’ concerns about the cost of living more seriously than he’s letting on. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that just 17% of American adults approve of Trump’s response to the cost of living, while only a quarter approve of his approach to the economy generally. To make matters worse, more than half of American adults blame the president for high costs – and it doesn’t look like they are coming down anytime soon.
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