Medicare Solvency

“When Medicare was passed, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans didn’t have more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent combined and it only makes sense that some adjustments be made to reflect that reality today.

Let’s ask them to pay their fair share so that the millions of workers who helped them build that wealth can retire with dignity and the Medicare they paid into.”

Notably, the Republicans’ tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations under Trump cost at least $2 trillion over time.

In a New York Times op-ed today, President Joe Biden offered a plan to reduce the deficit. In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, permitting Medicare officials to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices and capping the costs of drugs for seniors. This measure is already projected to reduce the deficit by at least $160 billion. Biden proposes to increase the scope of Medicare’s negotiations over drug prices. The process would yield $200 billion in savings to strengthen Medicare’s trust fund.

He outlined a plan to make the Medicare trust solvent beyond 2050 without cutting benefits. Something the Republicans refuse to do.  MAGA Republicans want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, getting rid of drug negotiations and price caps.

Biden will solve the solvency issue with a 1% increase on the Medicare tax rate on earned and unearned income above $400,000.  That money, too, would go into Medicare’s trust fund.

Since early 2017—the start of Trump’s administration—three fifths of the ballooning new debt was signed into law by Trump, and nearly 75% of it came from bills approved by a majority of Republicans in at least one chamber of Congress.