By Tom Price and Elaine Parker
The passing of the baton from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris, and more recently, the choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate, is certainly shaking up the November election. But beyond reshuffling the political horse race, a Harris-Walz administration wouldn’t change much. It would just mean more of the same bad Democratic policies.
For healthcare, that spells fewer choices for patients and higher costs.
Under Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is using the heavy hand of government to dictate prices of certain drugs accessed through Medicare. If Democrats win the White House for another term, hopes of undoing these government price controls will be dashed.
The process of fixing prices and attempting to manipulate free market mechanisms is already having severe unintended consequences for seniors. Average Medicare Part D premiums are up 21% this year compared to 2023. And the ballooning out-of-pocket costs are expected to worsen as price controls go into full force over the next two years.
Concerningly, Harris has also shown an affinity for doubling down on restricting, or outright eliminating, patient choice beyond what the current president has pulled off. As a senator, Harris was one of only 17 Democrats who signed on to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Medicare for All” proposal, which was so radical even Biden refused to stomach it at the time. Many Democrats feared the plan would effectively eliminate private coverage.
While Harris has recently flip-flopped on “Medicare for All,” her inclinations are concerning.
Dumping more and more taxpayer dollars into healthcare is a poor approach, as Obamacare has proven. Combining strict health plan regulations with increasingly large government subsidies encourages healthcare prices to rise rather than fall. Why? Because choice is undermined, and government spending creates upward cost pressures.
Per capita healthcare expenditures have jumped by more than 40% since Obamacare took effect. That’s a significantly quicker rate compared to a similar period leading up to the law’s implementation.
While some Americans are shielded from inflating prices because of subsidies, at the end of the day taxpayers are on the hook to cover the costs.
Fortunately, there’s an election in November. And while Harris has been coronated as Biden’s replacement on the Democrat ticket, she and Walz must plead their case to voters before walking into the White House. And on healthcare, Republicans have a much stronger track record.
During the previous Republican administration, concrete steps were taken to increase choice and better prioritize transparency within healthcare.
For one, Republicans championed the expansion of association health plans, which make it easier for small businesses to band together to buy coverage for employees. The move provided extra bargaining power so Main Street could negotiate more favorable prices and terms such as those enjoyed by large corporations.
Unfortunately, the changes didn’t stick. Under the Biden-Harris administration, that path has effectively been axed — yet another casualty in the Democrats’ war on small businesses.
Reforming the drug supply chain was also a main component of the Trump administration’s healthcare agenda. In 2020, the Republican president took executive action to lower medicine costs for seniors by addressing kick-back schemes executed by middlemen. The rule would have ensured Medicare Part D recipients realize discounts already provided by drugmakers as financial savings at the pharmacy counter. But this too has been reversed by Democrats.
Americans can’t afford a continuation of the same bad policies under Harris and Walz. On healthcare, there’s no question of which candidate’s policy agenda will deliver wins for American patients.
Tom Price served as the 23rd U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and is a senior healthcare policy fellow at the Job Creators Network. Elaine Parker is the president of the Job Creators Network Foundation.
