New Savings for Medicare Part B

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, a couple days ago, Medicare beneficiaries all across America received very welcome news. For 2023, Medicare announced that the part B premiums, which are deducted from seniors' Social Security checks, will actually be reduced by $6 a month. That is the first time in 11 years that the Medicare program has actually cut the premiums that erode month by month Social Security checks.

There is a reason for this, which is that last year there was a spike in terms of the part B premiums. It was driven by the fact that a new drug, Aduhelm, was approved just about the same time the actuaries were calculating the part B premiums.

Aduhelm's cost, when it was initially approved by FDA, was about $58,000 per patient. That one medication resulted in half of the increase last year in terms of Medicare part B premiums. There was a hue and cry about the cost of that drug after the new premium had kicked in. They cut the price from $58,000 per patient to $26,000. Medicare also limited the use of that drug in terms of experimental, controlled settings because it was so brand new.

Unfortunately, the premium had already kicked in, and a number of us were working with the Department of Health and Human Services saying that the premium should be adjusted because it was based on data which had been overtaken by events. At that point, it was too late for Medicare to readjust the premium in the last calendar year, 2022, but next year they will make the adjustment, and those premiums will go down.

In about a week or so, the government is going to be announcing the COLA for Social Security for 2023 for seniors, which is obviously a very intensely watched event. Right now, the projection, based again on the market-basket system that they use to calculate COLA, looks like it is going to be an 8 percent increase for Social Security for 2023.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to note that in past years some of those COLA increases have been eroded, as I mentioned earlier, by increases in the part B premium. In 2023, the opposite is going to happen. There will actually be, not only a COLA increase but a reduction in the premium, and that means more money in the pockets of seniors and people on disability.

Again, this is very welcome news. Obviously, inflation has been really tough for a lot of families, and particularly seniors on fixed incomes, but in 2023 there is going to be, again, more relief coming their way.

It also coincides with the new Inflation Reduction Act, which will be capping the cost of insulin, starting in January, at $35 a month. For seniors who are on Medicare today who need insulin, which is a life or death drug, insulin roughly costs about $160 per month.

There will be savings, not only in terms of a new COLA and a reduced part B premium, but also the cost of insulin will be capped at $35 a month. In 2024 and 2025, under the Inflation Reduction Act, because of savings resulting from price negotiation, which the bill finally enabled and empowered, we are going to see an overall cap on out-of- pocket costs for prescription drugs at $2,000 for seniors through the part D program.

If you talk to anybody who has an MS condition or an MS patient in someone's family, the mere infusion of a monthly MS treatment basically forces most seniors onto Medicaid because it is thousands of dollars per treatment.

Starting with this new program, their overall cap for a year will be $2,000. That is why the Multiple Sclerosis Society endorsed this bill, as did many other patient advocacy groups. As valuable as Medicare was for prescription drugs, the existing system still is way too expensive.

With the Inflation Reduction Act, we are going to cap insulin, we are going to cap the overall cost of medications. Unbelievably, just a few days ago, the minority came out with their commitment for America where they actually want to repeal the law on which the ink is barely dry, that is going to provide a ray of hope for seniors to pay for the cost of lifesaving drugs. We can't let that happen.

Starting in January, we are going to see the real benefits of that law, as well as welcome news in terms of a higher COLA and a smaller part B premium.

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